Re: Re: my $var; vs. use constant VAR = '';

Ah, the perils of benchmarking... my results from v5.6.1 on Linux:

            Rate   CRef CAlias    CMy CLocal   CMod   CSub
CRef   2702703/s     --    -8%   -22%   -22%   -24%   -27%
CAlias 2941176/s     9%     --   -15%   -15%   -18%   -21%
CMy    3448276/s    28%    17%     --    -0%    -3%    -7%
CLocal 3448276/s    28%    17%     0%     --    -3%    -7%
CMod   3571429/s    32%    21%     4%     4%     --    -4%
CSub   3703704/s    37%    26%     7%     7%     4%     --
[download]

and then the same program, run just a second later:

CAlias 2857143/s     --    -0%    -3%    -6%   -20%   -23%
CRef   2857143/s     0%     --    -3%    -6%   -20%   -23%
CMod   2941176/s     3%     3%     --    -3%   -18%   -21%
CSub   3030303/s     6%     6%     3%     --   -15%   -18%
CLocal 3571429/s    25%    25%    21%    18%     --    -4%
CMy    3703704/s    30%    30%    26%    22%     4%     --
[download]

   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print

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Re: Re: Re: my $var; vs. use constant VAR = ''; by Rhandom (Curate) on Apr 27, 2001 at 03:05 UTC
Don't worry, I had that happen on mine as well, but in every case, the my was a percentage faster and the ref was a percentage slower and everything else just hummed around in the middle. The point wasn't the benchmark. The point was that declaring aliases or setting up your own constant subs, are not that much slower than my'ing a variable or local'ing a variable. The point of benchmark is ballpark, and all of the types are in the ball park. my @a=qw(random brilliant braindead); print $a[rand(@a)];	[reply]
Re(4): my $var; vs. use constant VAR = ''; by MeowChow (Vicar) on Apr 27, 2001 at 03:23 UTC
Interestingly, if you throw a literal value in the mix, as done below, you will find that the literal is even usually a hair slower than a `my` variable. I'd be very curious to know why that is: #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use vars qw(const_alias $const_local); use Benchmark qw(cmpthese); local const_alias = \100; my $const_ref = \100; local $const_local = 100; my $const_my = 100; sub CONST_SUB () { 100 }; use constant CONST_MOD => 100; print "mod[".CONST_MOD."]\nsub[".CONST_SUB."]\n" ."my[$const_my]\nlocal[$const_local]\n" ."ref[$$const_ref]\nalias[$const_alias]\n"; # run iteratively within the sub to get a less skewed # result - that's my theory anyway :-) my $iter = 500; my $t; cmpthese (-5, { CMod => sub { $t = CONST_MOD for 1..$iter }, CSub => sub { $t = CONST_SUB for 1..$iter }, CMy => sub { $t = $const_my for 1..$iter }, CLocal => sub { $t = $const_local for 1..$iter }, CRef => sub { $t = $$const_ref for 1..$iter }, CAlias => sub { $t = $const_alias for 1..$iter }, CLit => sub { $t = 100 for 1..$iter }, }); ### RESULTS (repeatable this time :) ### Rate CRef CAlias CLocal CSub CLit CMod CMy CRef 3735/s -- -9% -9% -10% -11% -11% -13% CAlias 4088/s 9% -- -0% -2% -3% -3% -5% CLocal 4088/s 9% 0% -- -2% -3% -3% -5% CSub 4172/s 12% 2% 2% -- -1% -1% -3% CLit 4208/s 13% 3% 3% 1% -- -0% -2% CMod 4210/s 13% 3% 3% 1% 0% -- -2% CMy 4293/s 15% 5% 5% 3% 2% 2% -- [download] MeowChow s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re(4): my $var; vs. use constant VAR = ''; by Rhandom (Curate) on Apr 27, 2001 at 03:33 UTC
Ahhhh -- but run that again. New values. Perils of Benchmark {grin}. On our system here (6 to 7 developers per box) the load changes enough that even a "stable" test will show different outputs. Something that would be nice for benchmark to do is to randomize the order in which the tests are run -- pick one of the keys randomly each time. This would probably make the percentages a little bit more constant. Still though, kind of funny that things are in the ball park of a literal value. my @a=qw(random brilliant braindead); print $a[rand(@a)];	[reply]
Re^4: my $var; vs. use constant VAR = ''; by donaldhasson (Initiate) on Aug 03, 2008 at 16:54 UTC
So here are my benchmark results on Win XP with version 5.10. Mine are drastically different showing the 'use constant' is fastest. Do the newer versions of Perl treat constants differently? `mod[3]sub[3] my[3]local[3] ref[3]alias[3] Rate CAlias CRef CLocal CMy CSub CMod CAlias 3014249/s -- -9% -20% -22% -27% -45% CRef 3305288/s 10% -- -12% -14% -20% -40% CLocal 3749148/s 24% 13% -- -3% -10% -32% CMy 3849294/s 28% 16% 3% -- -7% -30% CSub 4149204/s 38% 26% 11% 8% -- -25% CMod 5504587/s 83% 67% 47% 43% 33% --` [download]	[reply] [d/l]