Making Programs Faster
`ourprof.out`

Here's an excerpt:
     785                        ## capturing parens keeps the delimiters)     
     786+  1440  0.10  1.87     $_ = $text;                                   
     787                    #    my @tokens = split /([A-Z]<(?:<+\s)?)/;      
     788+  1440  0.09  1.69     my @tokens = split /([A-Z]  <          # Escap
     789                                    (?: [^<>]* >      # ... and the re
     790                                      | (?: <+ \s )?  # OR a possible 
     791                                        ))/x;                         
     792                    #    { local $" = ")\n("; warn "tokens: (@tokens)\
     793*  7160  0.64 11.99     while ( @tokens ) {                           
     794*  5720  0.22  4.12         $_ = shift @tokens;                       
     795*  5720  0.25  4.68         next unless length;                       
     796                            ## Look for an entire simple sequence 2003
     797+  5652  0.14  2.62         if ( /^([A-Z])<([^<>]*)>$/ ) {            
     798*  2083  0.19  3.56             $seq = Pod::InteriorSequence->new(    
     799                                           -name   => $1,             
     800                                           -ldelim => "<",  -rdelim =>
     801                                           -file   => $file,    -line 
     802                                       );                             
     803+  2083  0.10  1.87             $seq->append($2) if length($2);       
     804+  2083  0.10  1.87             $seq->nested($seq_stack[-1]) if @seq_s
     805+  2083  0.10  1.87             $seq_stack[-1]->append($expand_seq ? &
     806                            }                                         
     807                            ## Look for the beginning of a sequence   
     808                            elsif ( /^([A-Z])(<(?:<+\s)?)$/ ) {       
     809                                ## Push a new sequence onto the stack 
     810-    38  0.01  0.19             ($cmd, $ldelim) = ($1, $2);           
     811     38  0.00  0.00             $seq = Pod::InteriorSequence->new(    
     812                                           -name   => $cmd,           
     813                                           -ldelim => $ldelim,  -rdeli
     814                                           -file   => $file,    -line 
     815                                       );
Some of this might be suggestive
For example, we might try to adjust the tokenizer to avoid generating empty tokens
- This would obviate line 795