How does prototypes affect performance or memory usage?

In Perl, prototypes can impact performance and memory usage in several ways. First, prototypes help the interpreter know how to treat the arguments passed to a subroutine. This can lead to optimizations in argument parsing and function dispatch. However, with complex prototypes, the overhead of checking argument types can increase memory usage and processing time. In scenarios where prototypes are overly complex or used excessively, this may lead to decreased performance.

When using prototypes effectively, they can simplify code and reduce memory usage by enabling more straightforward argument passing. However, be mindful of their impact on performance—especially when dealing with large datasets or high-frequency function calls.