Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days, Second Edition

Q&A

Q1:	You've discussed efficiency a lot in this chapter, but as far as I can see, all my programs run in the blink of an eye. Is efficiency really worth worrying about?
A1:	It depends. When you're using Perl to process example data, efficiency probably doesn't make a difference. When your Perl program has to process a 5 gigabyte Web log, it's worthwhile to cash in on any time savings that coding for efficiency can afford you. Perl is a language that's perfect for batch processing, and in the world of batch processing, every millisecond often counts.
Q2:	I have a bit of code that uses a two-step process to extract something out of a string. The first pattern puts a substring into $1, and then the second pattern searches $1 for a different pattern. ...