When should you prefer avoiding unnecessary copying, and when should you avoid it?

In Perl, avoiding unnecessary copying of data can lead to improvements in performance and memory usage, particularly in contexts where large data structures are involved. However, there are scenarios where simplicity and readability of code might take precedence over performance optimizations.

For example, if you're working with large arrays or hashes and need to process them repeatedly, it's beneficial to avoid creating multiple copies of the data. Instead, you can work with references, which allow you to manipulate the original data without copying it:

# Define a large array my @large_array = (1..1000000); # Instead of copying, use a reference my $array_ref = \@large_array; # Process using the reference foreach my $element (@$array_ref) { # Perform operations }

Perl performance memory optimization data structures references

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