$ curl -O http://www.textfiles.com/etext/FICTION/lesms10.txt

$ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/marioroy/mce-examples/master/other/wc.pl
$ chmod 755 wc.pl

$ rm -f lesms10_big.txt
$ for i in `seq 1 200`; do cat lesms10.txt >> lesms10_big.txt; done

$ ls -lh lesms10*
-rw-r--r-- 1 pmuser staff 3.1M Nov 13 19:27 lesms10.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 pmuser staff 623M Nov 13 19:39 lesms10_big.txt

# Read once before testing to be fair for 1st and subsequent wc/wc.pl.
# Sorry, I didn't want to go through the trouble clearing OS cache.

$ cat lesms10_big.txt >/dev/null

##</code><code>##

$ time wc lesms10_big.txt
 14152200 113528600 652751200 lesms10_big.txt

real 0m2.132s
user 0m2.076s
sys  0m0.056s

$ time wc < lesms10_big.txt
 14152200 113528600 652751200

real 0m2.140s
user 0m2.085s
sys  0m0.055s

##</code><code>##

$ time ./wc.pl lesms10_big.txt
 14152200 113528600 652751200 lesms10_big.txt

real 0m0.536s  (3.98x)
user 0m3.570s
sys  0m0.591s

$ time ./wc.pl < lesms10_big.txt
 14152200 113528600 652751200

real 0m0.740s  (2.89x)
user 0m3.784s
sys  0m1.166s

##</code><code>##

$ time wc -l lesms10_big.txt
 14152200 lesms10_big.txt

real 0m0.351s
user 0m0.296s
sys  0m0.055s

$ time ./wc.pl -l lesms10_big.txt
 14152200 lesms10_big.txt

real 0m0.208s
user 0m0.678s
sys  0m0.835s

##</code><code>##

$ time wc -w lesms10_big.txt
 113528600 lesms10_big.txt

real 0m2.125s
user 0m2.071s
sys  0m0.054s

$ time ./wc.pl -w lesms10_big.txt
 113528600 lesms10_big.txt

real 0m0.535s
user 0m3.574s
sys  0m0.599s

##</code><code>##

$ time wc -c lesms10_big.txt
 652751200 lesms10_big.txt

real 0m0.003s
user 0m0.001s
sys  0m0.002s

$ time ./wc.pl -c lesms10_big.txt
 652751200 lesms10_big.txt

real 0m0.054s
user 0m0.042s
sys  0m0.010s

##</code><code>##

Linux: sudo echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
macOS: sudo purge

$ time wc lesms10_big.txt 
 14152200 113528600 652751200 lesms10_big.txt

real 0m2.435s
user 0m2.330s
sys  0m0.098s

Linux: sudo echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
macOS: sudo purge

$ time ./wc.pl lesms10_big.txt  
 14152200 113528600 652751200 lesms10_big.txt

real 0m0.662s  (3.68x)
user 0m3.598s
sys  0m0.736s