Best search performance could be reached as O(log(N)) by using balanced tree.
You could implement this as a perl module, although this will be much slower than internal implementation O(N).
Also do not forget that adding into search list also counts, and I think adding into a hash would cost O(1)

It is know that commonly used in C library qsort is also O(N*N) in worst case and something like O(N*LOG(N)) in real life.
Also sorting method changed to mergesort in perl-5.8.0 and it was qsort for earlier perls.

Best regards,
Courage, the Cowardly Dog

In reply to Re: A short meditation about hash search performance by Courage
in thread A short meditation about hash search performance by pg

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