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From: marc@athena.mit.edu (Marc Horowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Need clarification of assoc. arrays
Message-ID: <1991Jan31.033851.19246@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 31 Jan 91 03:38:51 GMT
Sender: mmdf@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU (Uvaarpa Mail System)
Reply-To: marc@mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 22

|> So, this should be written as
|> 
|> 	for $i (keys %keyword) {
|> 	    print "the index is $i; the contents are $keyword{$i}\n";
|> 	}
|> 
|> Use `print' instead of `printf' when you can; it is a tiny bit faster.

Well, if speed is really a concern, you want to avoid interpolated
strings.  The fastest way to do that is

	for $i (keys %keyword) {
	    print 'the index is ',$i,'; the contents are ',$keyword{$i},"\n";
	}

I'm using '' assuming that perl will try to interpolate in "" strings
even if there is no interpolation to be done.  If perl is smarter
than that, great.  (Is it, Larry?)  Anyway, interpolation causes extra
copies which you don't need, although I admit, the interpolation form
is a lot nicer looking.

		Marc