Perl is very difficult to optimize. For example, take the code

for (0..1_000_000) {
 $x=$_+1;
}
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(Take my code, please!) In C, the equivlent code would be equivlent to x=1000001. In perl, you can't do that optimization, because $x might be tied, in which case, writing to it might have side effects. In C, you'd have to declare that, using the volitile keyword. In perl, there's no way to tell, so the compiler can't assume anything.

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