An update ... though stuff like '=' assignments make this entirely less than obvious. Check these stats out.

use Devel::Size 'total_size';
$ARY[ $_ ] = ? for 1 .. 1_000_000;
print total_size( \ @ARY ) . "\n";

# Do this as a comparison of a sparse array
$ARY_B[ 1_000_000 ] = 1;
print total_size( \ @ARY_B );
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I use !! $x because the return value is one of the values PL_sv_yes or PL_sv_no both of which are a single scalar that is shared through the entire process, forever. It is somewhat like undef being shared everywhere. You can have a million return values from !! $x and have them take up no space or you can have a million 1's and every one takes up a whole SV's worth of memory.

The choice is obvious.