Here is how spitbol script measures against wc. As with k, I am lacking in spitbol experience and so the counts are not identical to wc. Also I am using 10MB

Here is how spitbol script measures against wc. As with k, I am lacking in spitbol experience and so the counts are not identical to wc. Also I am using 10MB of big10.txt instead of the entire file. 1.spt: ;* m line count, c word count, o char count ;* p word pattern ; n = "0123456789" ; w = n &ucase &lcase "-" ; p = break(w) span(w) ;a a = input :f(c) ; o = o + size(a) ; m = m + 1 ;b a ? p = :f(a) ; c = c + 1 :(b) ;c output = m ' ' c ' ' o ;end dd if=big10.txt bs=5m count=2 of=10m.txt time -p wc 10m.txt 201346 1763181 10485760 10m.txt real 0.51 user 0.44 sys 0.00 time -p spitbol 1.spt < 10m.txt 201347 1770831 10235302 real 0.33 user 0.31 sys 0.01 It appears that spitbol script is faster than wc.