I meant bash is slower than perl. Python is also slower than perl. Python is quicker than bash in number/string operations in process, but much slower than bash

I meant bash is slower than perl. Python is also slower than perl. Python is quicker than bash in number/string operations in process, but much slower than bash in startup. 'Quick parse phase' is exactly the reason; it is not quick. Try to execute 1000 python processes and then 1000 bash processes that do something simple like add numbers given as command line arguments. Python is order of magnitude slower to finish.