Data::Dumper actually expands the data structure into human- and perl-readable form, which requires re-parsing it when you want to use it again. Storable works more like serialization in Java, in that a portable binary representation of the Perl variable is made, preserving things like blessed references and the like. I suspect Storable is going to be a little more efficient if all you want to do is store and retrieve the Perl structure. | [reply] |