What is confusing for me is that both the 6 Mega file and the 100 Mega file are Microsoft office documents that are not ASCAII encoded. 
guyn@il-kblwe02>ls -1sh
total 153M
6.1M linking_optimization_results_small.xls
 47M linking_optimization.txt
100M linking_optimization.xls
guyn@il-kblwe02>file linking_optimization_results_small.xls
linking_optimization_results_small.xls: Microsoft Office Document
guyn@il-kblwe02>file linking_optimization.xls
linking_optimization.xls: Microsoft Office Document

[download]
Also, they have the same amount of lines 
guyn@il-kblwe02>wc -l linking_optimization.xls                        
+                                                                     
+   
304562 linking_optimization.xls
guyn@il-kblwe02>wc -l linking_optimization_results_small.xls 
299554 linking_optimization_results_small.xls

[download]
So why is one so much larger than the other?

In reply to Re^2: Spreadsheet::WriteExcel large files (text versus binary format) by mrguy123
in thread Spreadsheet::WriteExcel large files by mrguy123

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