Interesting - here are the results:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);
package foo;
{
sub set_var1 { }
sub set_var2 { }
sub set_var3 { }
sub set_var4 { }
sub set_var5 { }
}
package main;
my $object = bless {}, 'foo';
my %hash = map { ( "var$_" => $_ ) } ( 1 .. 5 );
sub temp_var {
for ( keys %hash ) {
my $method = "set_$_";
$object->$method( $hash{$_} );
}
}
sub reused_lexical {
my $method;
for ( keys %hash ) {
$method = "set_$_";
$object->$method( $hash{$_} );
}
}
sub deref {
for ( keys %hash ) {
$object ->${ \"set_$_" }( $hash{$_} );
}
}
cmpthese( 1_000_000,
{ temp_var => \&temp_var,
deref => \&deref,
reused_lexical => \&reused_lexical,
}
);
Rate deref temp_var reused_lexic
+al
deref 173010/s -- -21% -2
+7%
temp_var 218818/s 26% -- -
+8%
reused_lexical 238095/s 38% 9%
+--
(Note: these benchmarks are for interest only, and are firmly in the field of premature optimization)