[Multiplying numbers]

but this is too slow.

My first reaction to anyone saying that basic arithmetic is too slow in Perl is: are you sure Perl is the right language to solve your problem in?.

i would like to hear an 'outside the box' opinion :)

Here's an outside the box opinion:

    use autodie;

    my @a = (230000 .. 900000);

    $ENV{BC_LINE_LENGTH} = 1 << 31;

    open my $cld, "|-", "bc";
    local $" = "*";
    print $cld "@a\n";
    close $cld;
[download]

Now, that gets you an exact answer. And is certainly "out of the (Perl) box". It may not be the fastest. If you need the fastest solution, I'd look into PDL. It's made for stuff like that. Alternatively, I'd port FORTRAN to Parrot, write a FORTRAN routine to calculate the product, then call the FORTRAN routine from a more familiar language that also runs on Parrot. But the PDL way may be easier.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.