scripts and speed

[Marvin Dickens]

One more thing:

Perl programs are compiled and turned into bytecode as they are invoked.
At this point, perl's bytecode engine actually runs it. If you have a
HUGE perl program that does one small quick task (Out of many potential
tasks), the runtime for the program will be dwarfed by the compile
time.However, under normal circumstances, compilation is a small
percentage of the runtime.

Best

Peck