Question

Running the following code :

use strict;
use warnings;
use Benchmark;

my $defaultArray = [1,2,3,4];
sub VARIABLE {
  my $arrayref =  @_ ? $_[0] : $defaultArray;
  return $arrayref->[0].$arrayref->[1].$arrayref->[2].$arrayref->[3];
}

Benchmark::cmpthese(
  -10,
  {
    VARIABLE_DEFAULT => sub { VARIABLE() },
    VARIABLE_NODEFAULT => sub { VARIABLE([4,3,2,1]) },
  }
);

I get the following Benchmark results :

                            Rate VARIABLE_NODEFAULT   VARIABLE_DEFAULT
VARIABLE_NODEFAULT  313631/s                 --               -74%
VARIABLE_DEFAULT   1210501/s               286%                 --

Why is the NODEFAULT version so much slower than the DEFAULT one ?