[MacPerl] MacPerl and Subs

[mark@cheers.jsc.nasa.gov (Mark Manning/Metrica)]

I've noticed that, every now and then, MacPerl seems to
slow way down when I get past a certain depth in calling
routines.  So I was wondering - does MacPerl look for
routines in a manner similar to how Basic used to do this?
IE: There is a list of some sort (like a hash table) and it
goes through the list each time it needs to call a
routine.  Or does MacPerl do some sort of an internal
compile of the information before it executes?  Just
wondering.  :-)