oh, forgot one. wc itself: $ time gwc -l big.log 1058408 big.log real 0m0.063s user 0m0.020s sys 0m0.041s $ time wc -l big.log 1058408 big.log re

oh, forgot one. wc itself: $ time gwc -l big.log 1058408 big.log real 0m0.063s user 0m0.020s sys 0m0.041s $ time wc -l big.log 1058408 big.log real 0m0.251s user 0m0.211s sys 0m0.040s