I don't know what's "cheaper".

I didn't know that magic goto would imply all that work... in fact I've seen it used to handcraft tail recursion, and indeed I wasn't suggesting its generalized use, since it should always be a specific tool to use in specific situations: other than the canonical AUTOLOAD one, I've been using it to switch repeatedly between two "states" that were defined in own subroutines none of which really meant to ever return. Upon a condition, one of them would goto the other.