You're probably right. I'm actually not interested in improving the runtime of this application specifically (most of the application's runtime is from timethis(10000,...)) but rather in making sure that my FTS module is as fast as possible.
I'm using it to replace another module in several real-world applications, a heavily modified CGI::FastTemplate which has become a little hard to maintain. I was hoping to make FTS as fast as or faster than CGI::FastTemplate so I could replace it with zero reservations, but I don't seem to have succeeded, even with all of the tips offered here (CGI::FastTemplates runs like this on the same data:
39 wallclock secs (35.76 usr + 1.93 sys = 37.69 CPU) @ 265.32/s (n=10000)
), but I think the extra maintainability is worth the slight slowdown .
My other goal was to expand my knowledge of how to optimize Perl code, which I definitely did! :-)
