Then how do you, Anonymous Monk, explain why JSON::XS is considerably faster than Storable in this example:

# Benchmark

use warnings;
use strict;

use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);
use Storable qw(freeze thaw);
use JSON::XS;

my $hashref = { one => 1, two => 2, three => 3, four => 4, five => 5 }
+;
my @array = (1 .. 1000);

cmpthese(
  -1,
  {
    'storable-hashref' => sub {
      my $foo = thaw(freeze($hashref));
    },
    'storable-arrayref' => sub {
      my $bar = thaw(freeze(\@array));
    },
    'json-xs-hashref' => sub {
      my $foo = decode_json(encode_json($hashref));
    },
    'json-xs-arrayref' => sub {
      my $bar = decode_json(encode_json(\@array));
    },
  }
);

__END__
[download]

$ perl -wl bm_storable_vs_json.pl
                      Rate storable-arrayref json-xs-arrayref storable
+-hashref json-xs-hashref
storable-arrayref   6222/s                --             -31%         
+    -84%            -99%
json-xs-arrayref    8967/s               44%               --         
+    -77%            -98%
storable-hashref   38280/s              515%             327%         
+      --            -92%
json-xs-hashref   501851/s             7965%            5497%         
+   1211%              --
$
[download]