I can confirm the improved randomness of the hashes in 5.8.1, I have an application I am debugging where I use Data::Dumper to show some hashes so I can check them. In 5.6.1 the same hash always had the same order. (I load it from a config file). But now in 5.8.1 I rarely see the same ordering. So as things improve so it becomes even more foolish to rely on any sort of ordering.

Which says to me, if you want an order, establish it for yourself.

As for how Perl allocates memory, VERY WELL! And it doesn't have too many leaks either.

jdtoronto