You are focussing to much on the details of the example. Don't forget this example comes from a book. Books are small. Code fragments in books need to be even smaller.

In a real program, the $name gt 'fred' could be a long, expensive expression, whose value is needed more than once. Or the comparison between $name and 'fred' and if statement has some code between it, code that may, or may not modify $name.

Abigail