I was comparing the proposition to what happens actually in the cheapest of scenarios. So 3. is skipped, and 4. amounts to deallocate the PV. Yes, there are definitely more steps involved, and maybe some are also necessary for a RAW type.

But that's not the point. A RAW type instead of a SV(PV) would also undergo a lot of the steps the SV(PV) undergoes, even if the RAW had an inmutable type. I'm just saying that (re)assigning a string to a variable already containing just a string (i.e. only the PV slot allocated, no magic attached) is comparably cheap compared to all the "whatnot" the perl intepreter does. Is this incorrect? Then the OP makes a valid point.