heh, well I did say that my implementation may have been a bit wonky.

Anyway, I re-worked it as you suggested, and interestingly it is now significantly slower... 

$ time ./gfather.pl
dump.1167332700 McDarren 71
Processed 9098 files (total files:57912)
       56.07 real         4.10 user         0.97 sys
$ time ./gfather.pl
dump.1167332700 McDarren 71
Processed 9098 files (total files:57912)
       51.58 real         4.15 user         0.91 sys

[download]
The re-worked section of the code looks like so: 
...
    undef $/;
    my $data = <IN>;
    my $pos = index($data,'McDarren');
    $/ = "\n";
    next FILE if $pos == -1;
#    seek(IN, $pos,0);
#   chomp(my $line = <IN>);
    my ($user,$level) = (split /\t/, substr $data, $pos)[0,3];
...

[download]
Adding a limit to the split seems to improve things slightly.. 
my ($user,$level) = (split /\t/, (substr $data, $pos),5)[0,3];

$ time ./gfather.pl
dump.1167332700 McDarren 71
Processed 9100 files (total files:57914)
       47.50 real         0.79 user         0.80 sys

[download]
Not a proper benchmark, I realise. Actually, how would I go about benchmarking this?

In reply to Re^4: Optimising a search of several thousand files by McDarren
in thread Optimising a search of several thousand files by McDarren

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.