Modern Perl has an optimisation for PV scalars (including strings), where a copied scalar will only copy the pointed-to data when it is written to. With that, there's no real benefit to accessing the scalar via a reference. Before that optimisation, there would have been a benefit.

Passing arrays and hashes by reference will avoid copying, and will (depending on scale) be the way to make things go faster.

In reply to Re: Passing argument by reference (for a scalar) by etj
in thread Passing argument by reference (for a scalar) by jmClifford

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