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in reply to Converting to boolean

An update ... though stuff like '=' assignments make this entirely less than obvious. Check these stats out.

use Devel::Size 'total_size'; $ARY[ $_ ] = ? for 1 .. 1_000_000; print total_size( \ @ARY ) . "\n"; # Do this as a comparison of a sparse array $ARY_B[ 1_000_000 ] = 1; print total_size( \ @ARY_B );
CodeSize
sparse4,000,072
undef16,194,340
120,195,340
\ undef20,194,352
\ !120,194,377
\ !!120,194,378
\ 120,195,340
( 1 + $| )24,194,340
\ ( 1 + $| )40,194,340
!141,194,340
!!142,194,340

I use !! $x because the return value is one of the values PL_sv_yes or PL_sv_no both of which are a single scalar that is shared through the entire process, forever. It is somewhat like undef being shared everywhere. You can have a million return values from !! $x and have them take up no space or you can have a million 1's and every one takes up a whole SV's worth of memory.

The choice is obvious.