Well, a bit of benchmarking might settle the case - however my guess would be "yes".

I would assume that double-quoted strings need checking for variables - however, if this takes place during the compile stage (and double-quoted strings w/o any vars are optimised out), then benchmarking might not show the difference (since the extra time would be used in the compile stage, rather than the run stage).

Sorry for the ignorant answer, but I was curious to see whether some other monk would confirm or shoot down my assumption.

<update>Heh - looks like my assumption was correct...</update>