All good points and I'm glad you brought them up. I guess the broader point I was trying to make was to make sure you dig your mind into the scope of the real problem. There are a number of things that will change your problem, inlcuding the reliability of (in this case ) @cp (in my case it will very reliably be either an empty list or an AoH), the Perl version you're running, etc.

Aggreed that splice_it is the best way for my case as well. I guess I was trying to express less of the best solution for my problem, but rather the worthyness of investigating multiple solutions for all problems in a more general sence.