My idea of join with list-context read seems to do pretty well (if I read the results correctly).

UPDATE: Err nope. that's per second. Okay, I didn't think it should be fast. I just wanted to see. 

use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);
cmpthese(50,
     {
      while=>sub{
        open(SITE, "/usr/share/dict/words");
        my $xml;
        while (<SITE>) {
          $xml .= $_;
        }
        close(SITE);
      }
      ,
      slurp=>sub{
        open(SITE, "/usr/share/dict/words");
        my $xml;
        local($/);
        undef $/;
        $xml = <SITE>;
        close(SITE);
      }
      ,
      join=>sub{
        open(SITE, "/usr/share/dict/words");
        my $xml = join('', <SITE>);
        close(SITE);
      }
      ,
      sys=>sub{
        sysopen(SITE, "/usr/share/dict/words", O_RDONLY);
        sysread SITE, my $xml, -s SITE;
        close(SITE);
        }
      }
);
__END__
Benchmark: timing 50 iterations of join, slurp, sys, while...
      join:  8 wallclock secs ( 7.99 usr +  0.17 sys =  8.16 CPU) @  6
+.13/s (n=50)
     slurp:  0 wallclock secs ( 0.12 usr +  0.14 sys =  0.26 CPU) @ 19
+2.31/s (n=50)
            (warning: too few iterations for a reliable count)
       sys:  1 wallclock secs ( 0.01 usr +  0.25 sys =  0.26 CPU) @ 19
+2.31/s (n=50)
            (warning: too few iterations for a reliable count)
     while:  5 wallclock secs ( 5.09 usr +  0.12 sys =  5.21 CPU) @  9
+.60/s (n=50)
        Rate  join while   sys slurp
join  6.13/s    --  -36%  -97%  -97%
while 9.60/s   57%    --  -95%  -95%
sys    192/s 3038% 1904%    --   -0%
slurp  192/s 3038% 1904%    0%    --

[download]

--
perl -pe "s/\b;([st])/'\1/mg"

In reply to Re: Reading entire file into scalar: speed differences? by belg4mit
in thread Reading entire file into scalar: speed differences? by theguvnor

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