Best way to iterate through a Perl array

  • In terms of speed: #1 and #4, but not by much in most instances.

    You could write a benchmark to confirm, but I suspect you’ll find #1 and #4 to be slightly faster because the iteration work is done in C instead of Perl, and no needless copying of the array elements occurs. ($_ is aliased to the element in #1, but #2 and #3 actually copy the scalars from the array.)

    #5 might be similar.

  • In terms memory usage: They’re all the same except for #5.

    for (@a) is special-cased to avoid flattening the array. The loop iterates over the indexes of the array.

  • In terms of readability: #1.

  • In terms of flexibility: #1/#4 and #5.

    #2 does not support elements that are false. #2 and #3 are destructive.

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