"... marked for garbage collection and will eventually be destroyed."

It's a whole lot better than that. Perl destroys the referent immediately its reference count goes to 0. See eyepopslikeamosquito's Re^2: Do subroutine variables get destroyed? (Deterministic Destructor References) for the more elaborate version.

Premature optimization is the root of all job security

In reply to Re^4: Do subroutine variables get destroyed? by GrandFather
in thread Do subroutine variables get destroyed? by bt101

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