I'll just post the summary output from cmpthese: (perl 5.6.1) Rate for_array grep for grep_two for_array 82736/s -- -8% -12% -44% grep 90290/s 9% -- -4% -39% for 94074/s 14% 4% -- -37% grep_two 148846/s 80% 65% 58% --