qwurx [shmem] ~> time perl -lne 'BEGIN{$,=" "}print+(split)[9,7,5,3,1]' in.txt >/dev/null

real	0m1.589s
user	0m1.588s
sys	0m0.004s
qwurx [shmem] ~> time python list.py in.txt >/dev/null

real	0m2.204s
user	0m2.188s
sys	0m0.016s