After an hour of bisecting, I have the commit that changed the behaviour:

https://github.com/Perl/perl5/commit/7be75ccf16313d987eb5a6e9ff6aec9fea4ef3d4

optimise @array in boolean context
It's quicker to return (and to test for) &PL_sv_zero or &PL_sv_yes, than setting a targ to an integer value or, in the vase of padav, creating a mortal sv and setting it to an integer value.
In fact for padav, even in the scalar but non-boolean case, return &PL_sv_zero if the value is zero rather than creating and setting a mortal.

Update: Compare to

perl -MDevel::Peek -e 'Dump(!!0)'
SV = PVNV(0x1838140) at 0x18363f8
  REFCNT = 2147483647
  FLAGS = (IOK,NOK,POK,IsCOW,READONLY,PROTECT,pIOK,pNOK,pPOK)
  IV = 0
  NV = 0
  PV = 0x5e6583 "" [BOOL PL_No]
  CUR = 0
  LEN = 0

[download]

map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]

In reply to Re^3: Reason for this discrepancy with scalar? by choroba
in thread Reason for this discrepancy with scalar? by kikuchiyo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.