Oh, one thing I meant to say earlier, but forgot about: the if statement and the ?: operator aren't really the seperate beasts they appear to be. See the documentation of B::Deparse, and the section on -q, specificly.

perl -MO=Deparse,-p,-x9 -e "if ($/) {print 1} else {print 2}"

($/ ? do { print(1) } : do { print(2) });
-e syntax OK

perl -MO=Deparse,-p,-x9 -e "$/?print 1:print 2"
($/ ? print(1) : print(2));
-e syntax OK
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All the speed diference you see is from those do{}s. Moral of the story? Perl is even stranger then it looks, it has a poor optimizer, do{} is expensive, and other. Pick any combination you feel like.