use strict;
use warnings;

use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);


my $long_string = 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa' x 1000000;
my $destination;


sub return_scalar { return  $long_string }
sub return_ref    { return \$long_string }


cmpthese(
    -1,
    {   'scalar' => sub { $destination = return_scalar() },
        'ref'    => sub { $destination = return_ref   () },
        }
    );


##</code><code>##

            Rate   scalar      ref
scalar    22.2/s       --    -100%
ref    1612824/s 7250890%       --