use strict; use warnings; use Time::HiRes qw(time); open my $name_infh, '<', 'path/to/names/list' or die $!; open my $haystack_infh, '<', 'path/to/tab/delimited/list' or die $!; my $t0 = time(); while(<$name_infh>) {} while(<$haystack_infh>) {} printf "Elapsed time: %-.03f\n", time-$t0;