The Perl script will be slower because there are some extra steps it's going through in that code. So it can be improved. First here is the base line (using m

The Perl script will be slower because there are some extra steps it's going through in that code. So it can be improved. First here is the base line (using my own transaction.list file): $ time awk '{ SUM+=$5 } END {printf "%d\n", SUM}' transaction.list 7725580800 real 0m1.419s user 0m1.391s sys 0m0.027s $ time perl -e 'my $sum = 0; while (<>) { my @F=split; $sum+=$F[4]} printf"%d\n", $sum' transaction.list 7725580800 real 0m3.453s user 0m3.428s sys 0m0.024s So this can be improved upon by removing need to create that temporary @F array in each loop... $ time perl -ne '$sum += (split)[4]; END {printf "%d\n", $sum}' transaction.list 7725580800 real 0m2.727s user 0m2.700s sys 0m0.026s Better but has mentioned by dtamhk elsewhere here, split can be speeded up if you are able to give it a limit: $ time perl -ne '$sum += (split /\s+/, $_, 5)[4]; END {printf "%d\n", $sum}' transaction.list 7725580800 real 0m1.657s user 0m1.632s sys 0m0.023s So now pretty much identical to awk speed. And if you're able to use substr instead of split then you can make it significantly faster than awk: $ time perl -ne '$sum += substr($_, 30, 12); END {printf "%d\n", $sum}' transaction.list 7725580800 real 0m0.368s user 0m0.347s sys 0m0.021s