$ time perl foo.pl real 0m9.204s user 0m3.697s sys 0m1.387s $ cat foo.pl #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use warnings; open F1, 'sort s1|' or die "opening file 1"; open F2, 'sort s2|' or die "opening file 2"; open OU1, '>', 'uniq.1' or die; open OU2, '>', 'uniq.2' or die; open OU3, '>', 'common' or die; # Prime the pump my $in1 = ; my $in2 = ; while (1) { last if !defined($in1) and !defined($in2); if (!defined($in1)) { # File 1 is empty, rest of File 2 is unique print OU2 $in2; $in2 = ; } elsif (!defined($in2)) { # File 2 is empty, rest of File 1 is unique print OU1 $in1; $in1 = ; } elsif ($in1 eq $in2) { # Line common to both print OU3 $in1; $in1 = ; $in2 = ; } elsif ($in1 lt $in2) { # Line unique to File 1 print OU1 $in1; $in1 = ; } else { # Line unique to File 2 print OU2 $in2; $in2 = ; } }