Well, I felt it vitally important to see exactly how much of an improvement this really is so I benchmarked it:

Benchmark: running tilly_l, tilly_s, tye_l, tye_s, each for at least 3
+ CPU seconds...
Out of memory!
[download]

Oops. Um, let me try that again:

Benchmark: running tilly_l, tilly_s, tye_l, tye_s, each for at least 3
+ CPU seconds...
   tilly_l:  5.14 CPU @  0.39/s (n=2)
            (warning: too few iterations for a reliable count)
   tilly_s:  3.25 CPU @ 18.44/s (n=60)
     tye_l:  3.16 CPU @ 443.43/s (n=1403)
     tye_s:  3.25 CPU @ 1691.22/s (n=5488)
[download]

Ah, yes, an admirable improvement. But my code still looks nicer, which was the point.

So I win this round... ; )

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")