In my answer, I show how to process the output line by line instead. It didn't change the exponential behaviour, though.

map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]

In reply to Re^2: Script exponentially slower as number of files to process increases by choroba
in thread Script exponentially slower as number of files to process increases by xnous

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