https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2105-9-82/figures/3

Oh hey, I've seen that link before. You're ignoring the elephant in the room: if you want speed, you need to use C. Oh, and C++ isn't very far behind so maybe it's worth using that instead because std::string is so much nicer than cstrings.

I'm not sure what you're up to here, I see no point to any of your recommendations on Perl 7 and, worse yet, you insist on misquoting Knuth to support your position.

Ok, I'm sorry. That probably feels like an attack. I'd like to think your heart is in the right place and that you're really trying to make Perl better. Assuming your realm is genetics, the way to make Perl faster is XS so you can use C for the speed. Micro-optimizing on $_ is not the answer.