It seems variable read/write access times are affected heavily by the number of variables already set. My original benchmarks were based on only a couple of global variables existing at once. Setting 5000 unrelated global vars slows the original benchmark to 1/20th of its original speed which is a looong way behind the hash table benchmarks.
Yes, i have the same result.
I don't know why you're saying that variable are not slower than hash table.It's possible that speed will depend on how you use %variable or how you use hash table but I really hope you can answer the question "how do you know variable are cached in memory ?" because this is interesting.
