Did you try it? :)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my @a; 
push @a,{ "$_" => 1 } for 1..40000; 
print Dumper @a[30000..30010];
[download]

This takes < 1 second to complete on my ~666Mhz box.

mr.nick ...