#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Benchmark qw(:all) ; my $n = 100000; our %hash1; @hash1{1..$n} = 1 x $n; my $n2 = 100000; our %hash2; @hash2{1..$n2} = 1 x $n2; my $n3 = 1000000; our %hash3; @hash3{1..$n3} = 1 x $n3; cmpthese( 1000, { 'Method 1' => sub { my @k = keys %hash1; my $v = scalar @k; }, '100K' => sub { my $v = scalar keys %hash2; }, '1 Mill' => sub { my $v = scalar keys %hash3; } } );