note cLive ;-) Hmmm, well, I stripped it down further: <code>use strict; use warnings; use Benchmark 'cmpthese'; cmpthese(-1, { 'eval' => \&eval_code, 'noeval' => \&no_eval_code, }); sub eval_code { eval { some_more_code (); }; if ($@) { error_sub(); } } sub no_eval_code { if (0) { error_sub(); } else { some_more_code (); } } sub some_more_code { } sub error_sub { }</code> And got this (I think the effectively empty eval is meaningless - see here where I ran it 4 times): <code> Rate eval noeval eval 1298354/s -- -37% noeval 2066450/s 59% -- Rate eval noeval eval 1316991/s -- -38% noeval 2123851/s 61% -- Rate eval noeval eval 1217925/s -- -21% noeval 1534287/s 26% -- Rate eval noeval eval 1298354/s -- -41% noeval 2205537/s 70% -- </code> I have a feeling an empty eval gets optimized away at compile time (though I am most probably wrong :)<p>How about if I add in an increment do ensure each eval has to be 'eval'd, ie <code> use strict; use warnings; use Benchmark 'cmpthese'; my $x; cmpthese(-1, { 'eval' => \&eval_code, 'noeval' => \&no_eval_code, }); sub eval_code { $x=1; eval { some_more_code (); }; if ($@) { error_sub(); } } sub no_eval_code { if ($x==0) { error_sub(); } else { $x=0; some_more_code (); } } sub some_more_code { $x++ } sub error_sub { } </code> I get this: <code> Rate eval noeval eval 989400/s -- -23% noeval 1286220/s 30% -- -bash-3.00$ perl tmp.pl Rate eval noeval eval 1092266/s -- -21% noeval 1379705/s 26% -- Rate eval noeval eval 1069351/s -- -19% noeval 1327443/s 24% -- Rate eval noeval eval 1071850/s -- -25% noeval 1435550/s 34% -- Rate eval noeval eval 1071850/s -- -26% noeval 1456355/s 36% -- </code> Either way, I still haven't been able to create a counter example that shows eval to be faster.<p> But anyway, considering the number of runs a second, I have a feeling my energies are probably better spent focusing on other parts of the code as far as optimizations are concerned :) 629680 629736