Assigning a string is actually quite complex when dealing with scalars.

  1. Call GET magic on the scalar being assigned if any.
  2. Check what the scalar being assigned contains (which happens to be a string).
  3. Upgrade the scalar to which we are assigning to one that can contain a string if needed.
  4. Clear whatever value the scalar to which we are assigning contains. (This can require reducing reference counts (which can require calling destructors, etc), reducing COW counts, resetting OOB vars, etc.)
  5. Finally, we can start the copy. That can happen one of three ways. Hopefully, it's just a question of copying a pointer and incrementing the COW reference count.

(I definitely skipped some steps. I got tired of typing.)

Walking the optree, on the other hand, is simply following a linked list. (Effectively, op = op->next.) This is way simpler than assigning a string.

In reply to Re^2: Why not perl have raw/native type by ikegami
in thread Why not perl have raw/native type by xiaoyafeng

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