I would also suggest checking the operating system logs. Depending on OPs setup, the system (or some security software) may throttle or slow down the ability to fork new processes if it thinks there is something strange going on. (Similar to how init may prevent daemons to restart too often in a given timeframe).

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In reply to Re^6: Script exponentially slower as number of files to process increases by cavac
in thread Script exponentially slower as number of files to process increases by xnous

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