It depends on the frequency of the matches. I'm convinced that one call to index() on a string of 10k, with a negative result, or just a few matches, is a lot faster than 10000 calls to getc() and the same number of eq tests. It's a matter of doing the same task in C, or in Perl. C usually wins hands down.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: character-by-character in a huge file by bart
in thread character-by-character in a huge file by mushnik

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