Well, someone had to do it right?
I haven't played with benchmarking much, but here is my contribution.. 
use Benchmark;

timethese (50000, {
    'OPENCAT'    => sub 
    {
        open (INFILE, "cat mbox |");
        while (<INFILE>){ #do nothing
                }
        close INFILE;
    },
    'OPENPERL' => sub 
    {
        open (INFILE, "mbox");
        while (<INFILE>){ #do nothing
                }
        close INFILE;
    }
});

[download]
Results:

Benchmark: timing 50000 iterations of OPENCAT, OPENPERL...
OPENCAT: 287 wallclock secs (175.33 usr 19.89 sys + 46.32 cusr 44.78 csys = 286.32 CPU) @ 256.12/s (n=50000)
OPENPERL: 171 wallclock secs (168.59 usr + 2.50 sys = 171.09 CPU) @ 292.24/s (n=50000)

I dropped "system" out of it early on - due to the fact that it was at about the above levels after only 1000 iterations :-)

In reply to Re: cat vs. file handle speed? by the_slycer
in thread cat vs. file handle speed? by dorpus

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