Pseudo Code reads ...

You could post real code here (between <code></code> tags), we might have hints for you.

I guess the slowdown is due to OS latency giving out more memory to perl, since there's nothing in the language which would inherently slow down the allocation process between 1.5 and 2.3 millions of records.

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}