#!/usr/bin/perl -w

  use strict;
  use Benchmark qw(:all);

  my $str_a = "dlajsdlkajslkdjasldjasljdaskjd";

  cmpthese(
    -5,
    {
      'Test1' => sub { ord( $str_a ) },
      'Test2' => sub { ord( ( split ( //, $str_a ) )[0] ) },
      'Test3' => sub { ord( substr $str_a, 0, 1 ) },
    }
  );

__DATA__

Results:
           Rate  Test2  Test3  Test1
Test2    6321/s     --   -99%  -100%
Test3  516114/s  8065%     --   -72%
Test1 1827646/s 28815%   254%     --