A couple of points with comparing coreutils, * recompiling with -march=native can give significant wins over more generic binaries provided by linux distros.

A couple of points with comparing coreutils, * recompiling with -march=native can give significant wins over more generic binaries provided by linux distros. * parallel processing helps with bigger files, and it's easy enough to leverage the existing wc binary to process in parallel. Both points are discussed at: https://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/unix-parallel-tools.html https://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/unix-parallel-tools.html