Thank you for the invitation. Actually, it might be a worthwhile first step just to make sure my assertion isn't based on faulty evidence. If you get a chance to check out the benchmark in the thread I cited above (specifically at this node: Re^2: Get useful info about a directory tree), it's entirely possible that the timing results there are reflecting something other than a difference between File::Find and straight recursion with opendir/readdir.

(I've seen enough benchmark discussions here at the monastery to know that a proper benchmark can be an elusive creature.)

If that benchmark happens to be a valid comparison of the two approaches, it would also be a good exercise for a debugger or profiler session, to see what's causing the difference.

In any case, I definitely don't want to dissuade people from using File::Find or its various derivatives and convenience wrappers -- they do make for much easier solutions to the basic problem, and in the vast majority of cases, a little extra run time is a complete non-issue. (It's just that I've had to face a few edge cases where improving run time when traversing insanely large directories made a big difference.)