HOWEVER, scrutinizing the Benchmark code reveals that *it* in fact string evals.

I don't see how it can possibly get something useful out of a sub reference's stringification, but I'm too lazy to look at Benchmark's source. Let's try something different:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);

sub single { $foo = 'foo' }
sub double { $foo = "foo" }
cmpthese (10000000, {
        single => sub { single() },
        double => sub { double() }
});
[download]

What does that show on your system?

- Yes, I reinvent wheels.
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