I am a big booster of Devel::NYTProf, and have found some surprising and counter-intuitive results from it. However, in the present case my time is currently being spend outside of perl, in system calls to other executables that I do not have control of (and can’t profile inside of). I do use Timer::Simple and Time::HiRes to keep track of time spent on system calls.

My lack of knowledge is along the lines of: are “wget (downloaded and compiled) and /usr/bin/gzip (part of distro) blunt tools for my needs”, or are they sharp tools via pedigree and refinement. My sense is that since they are designed to address a whole class of problems— vs. a perl module (or family of modules) designed to address a specific problem. Ergo, a more efficient perish solution is probably worth the effort. Unless I hear otherwise.

Also, given the CPAN’s numerous code trees, (seemingly) providing different approaches, a nudge in the most productive direction would be appreciated.