Right. I can explain that!

ikegami reads in two lines in one go and unpacks both lines with one single unpack, which is why he uses \(2 * 122). That makes his test code almost twice as fast as the code that BrowserUk translated it to, which reads the two lines in two separate read/unpack sequences.

The difference between \122 and \123 is most likely to blame on Windows line endings. That is why ikegami used x2's and BrowserUk uses x3's.

Interesting thread though :)