Depends on if you include time to type the command. If your find command looks like find . -name '*.pl' -o -name '*.pm' | xargs grep foo and it takes 1 s

Depends on if you include time to type the command. If your find command looks like find . -name '*.pl' -o -name '*.pm' | xargs grep foo and it takes 1 second to finish, and your ack command is ack foo --perl and it takes 1.5 seconds to finish, you can say the grep is faster. But I just timed the time it takes to type those, and they took me 9.2 vs. 2.3 seconds. So which is faster: 9.2+1.0 or 2.3+1.5?