$ perl -E'say join"\t",qw(1 aap 2 noot 3 mies 4 wim 5 zus 6) for 1..2_000_000' > test.tsv $ wc -l test.tsv 2000000 test.tsv $ cat test.pl use 5.016; use warnings; use Benchmark qw( cmpthese ); use Text::CSV_XS; my $csv = Text::CSV_XS->new ({ sep_char => "\t", auto_diag => 1 }); cmpthese (3, { none => sub { open my $fh, "<", "test.tsv"; while (<$fh>) { } }, splt => sub { open my $fh, "<", "test.tsv"; while (<$fh>) { my @f = split m/\t/ => $_, -1; } }, tcsv => sub { open my $fh, "<", "test.tsv"; while (my $f = $csv->getline ($fh)) { # use $f->[1] instead of $f[1]; } }, tcsvbc => sub { open my $fh, "<", "test.tsv"; my @f = ("") x 11; $csv->bind_columns (\(@f)); while ($csv->getline ($fh)) { } }, }); $ perl test.pl s/iter tcsv tcsvbc splt none tcsv 5.26 -- -32% -36% -96% tcsvbc 3.57 48% -- -5% -93% splt 3.38 56% 6% -- -93% none 0.233 2156% 1429% 1347% -- $