use strict;
use HTML::Element;
sub funny {
    my $counter = 'x0000';
    my $give_id;
    $give_id = sub {
      my $x = $_[0];
      $x->attr('id', $counter++) unless defined $x->attr('id');
      foreach my $c ($x->content_list) {
        $give_id->($c) if ref $c; # ignore text nodes
      }
    };
    $give_id->($_[0]);
    undef $give_id;  ##### Remove for evil effects #####
  }

my  $a = HTML::Element->new('a', href => 'http://www.perl.com/');

print "Start: ", scalar(localtime), "\n";
for my $i (0..1_000_000) { funny($a); }
print "Finish: ", scalar(localtime), "\n";