use File::SortedSeek; sub record_search { my ($key, $filename, $recordsize) = @_; my $fh = IO::File->new($filename, 'r') or croak("Could not open $filename: $!"); # I don't see any difference in speed with the next line # File::SortedSeek::set_line_length($recordsize); numeric( $fh, $key); return File::SortedSeek::was_exact(); }