Very interesting! With the EXACT same code as Ikegami, (with the (a)* mod), I get: 
           Rate    regex    split unpack_C unpack_a
regex    3.00/s       --      -3%      -9%     -19%
split    3.09/s       3%       --      -6%     -17%
unpack_C 3.29/s      10%       7%       --     -11%
unpack_a 3.71/s      24%      20%      13%       --

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I have seen before that the Ikegami machine is faster than mine on certain benchmarks. But, I am unable to understand how split() can be the fastest. I am running a Prescott processor, an old 3 Ghz hyper-threaded critter. With Active State Perl 5.10.1.

In reply to Re^2: Convert string to array - performance challenge by Marshall
in thread Convert string to array - performance challenge by rtillian

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