thank you for the feedback, guys... i will go with the second method. before reading about benchmark, i timed the two methods using unix's time command. here are the results: 
cat:
real        0.3
user        0.1
sys         0.2

read:
real        0.2
user        0.0
sys         0.1

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In reply to Re^2: shell vs. filehandler by 10basetom
in thread shell vs. filehandler by 10basetom

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