As of 5.10, use constant will use less memory than Greg's version. I'm loathe to make the same changes for 5.8.9, as the implementation confuses some modules that inspect the symbol table. The necessary infrastructure will be in 5.8.9 though.
You can add me to the "don't want to see it happen" side as well.Correctness and back-compatibility come before performance for me in this case.
Adam K
