The Missing 15%

• A couple of years later, some bright boy finally asked the right question

• He did not compare the new syntax with the old syntax in Perl 5.005

• Instead, he compared the old syntax in 5.005 with the old syntax in 5.004

• 5.005 was 15% slower

• Adding the pseudohash stuff to 5.005 had slowed down all hash access by 15%

• In the best possible case, the efficiency gain was just enough to get you back to zero