I don't think that is material, it definitely isn't for code that's actually running the loop. I did just try timing it with the pipe to hexdump and of course i

I don't think that is material, it definitely isn't for code that's actually running the loop. I did just try timing it with the pipe to hexdump and of course it makes no difference. One could do the same or just modify the code to include conversion if worried about the impact.