in reply to default variable question

A few truisms:

If you're worried about the 3 extra femtoseconds that the slower chose might take, then you shouldn't be programming in Perl. Unless, of course, you're curious about the internals of Perl and how exactly everything works. In which case, I would suggest rephrasing your question. :-)

My criteria for good software:
  1. Does it work?
  2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom