Yes, but like all the others answered, there are ways to write Perl more efficiently, while not sacrificing the quality of the code. And the best idea was indeed to use a profiler, which I am analyzing right now

"Don't use Perl" might be correct, but it's not very useful for me.

"I think that Perl 5.10's new switch is a very cool feature, but I think it might be a bit slow and not the best idea when running a program that takes a couple of hours" would be a much more useful reply if it was true.

Like I said, I was looking for a few tips and ideas on how to increase my program's efficiency, and I did get a few tips and ideas that were indeed useful. And although in most cases Perl will not be the best language to use if you want something very very fast, I still think efficiency in Perl is an interesting and important question in at least some of the cases
BR
Guy Naamati