bannor:~/work/perl/monks$ cat 962552.pl
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use Modern::Perl;
use Benchmark qw(:all);

cmpthese( 10_000_000, {
        'return it' => \&returnit,
        'print it'  => \&printit,
});

# printing to STDERR so I can redirect to /dev/null
# and still see the benchmark results

sub returnit {
    print STDERR _returnit();
}

sub _returnit {
    'foo';
}

sub printit {
    _printit();
}

sub _printit {
    print STDERR 'foo';
}
bannor:~/work/perl/monks$ perl 962552.pl 2>/dev/null
               Rate return it  print it
return it 1298701/s        --      -24%
print it  1703578/s       31%        --