I realise that the original question was comparing 300 strings to 5000. I'd like to just point out that using a hash like this is something I do even when comparing a handful of strings to, say, 50 strings. Much like The Force, hashes are useful for small and large problems. Doing a direct compare is only a good idea if one of the two lists to compare is a list of one. For lists of 2-5, it may be ok, but anything larger, I'd use the hash.