Slurping a 15MB file into an array (longest line 357K) only took 3 wallclock seconds on my lowly PII300, so I think you really need to show us what you're doing, like BeernuT and crazyinsomniac ask.

One thing I will say though, is: the fastest way to read a file isn't the most obvious:

Using that method, I can read the whole file into a scalar in 0 wallclock seconds! :)

    --k.

You are aware perl has to compile the script, before it actually starts running it .... like BeernT said, show us some code (which you should've done in the first place)

 

______crazyinsomniac_____________________________ Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most. perl -e "$q=$_;map({chr unpack qq;H*;,$_}split(q;;,q*H*));print;$q/$q;"

In addition to the numerous admonitions you've already gotten for not posting any code in the first place, let me add this: you don't know that Textpad is reading the entire 270k-row file in that 1 second of start-up time. There's no reason for it to read more data than it can display on the initial page prior to setting up the basic display. It can then read the rest of the file in the background, or on an as-needed basis. Plus, as others have pointed out, Textpad is a binary, and a Perl script has to go through a compilation phase first.

--rjray