In perlfaq5, there's an answer for How do I count the number of lines in a file?. The current answer suggests a sysread and a tr/\n//. I wanted to try a few other things to see how much faster tr/\n// would be, and also try it against files with different average line lengths. I created a benchmark to try various ways to do it. I'm running this on Mac OS X 10.5.8 and Perl 5.10.1 on a MacBook Air:
- Shelling out to
wc(fastest except for short lines) tr/\n//(next fastest, except for long average line lengths)s/\n//g(usually speedy)while( <$fh> ) { $count++ }(almost always a slow poke, except whentr///bogs down)1 while( <$fh> ); $.(very fast)
Let's ignore that wc, which even with all the IPC stuff really turns in some attractive numbers.
On first blush, it looks like the tr/\n// is very good when the line lengths are small (say, 100 characters), but its performance drops off when they get large (1,000 characters in a line). The longer the lines get, the worse tr/\n// does. Is there something wrong with my benchmark, or is there something else going on in the internals that makes tr/// degrade? Why doesn't s/// degrade similarly?
First, the results.:
Rate very_long_lines-tr very_long_lines-$count very_long_lines-$. very_long_lines-s very_long_lines-wc
very_long_lines-tr 1.60/s -- -10% -12% -39% -72%
very_long_lines-$count 1.78/s 11% -- -2% -32% -69%
very_long_lines-$. 1.82/s 13% 2% -- -31% -68%
very_long_lines-s 2.64/s 64% 48% 45% -- -54%
very_long_lines-wc 5.67/s 253% 218% 212% 115% --
Rate long_lines-tr long_lines-$count long_lines-$. long_lines-s long_lines-wc
long_lines-tr 9.56/s -- -5% -7% -30% -63%
long_lines-$count 10.0/s 5% -- -2% -27% -61%
long_lines-$. 10.2/s 7% 2% -- -25% -60%
long_lines-s 13.6/s 43% 36% 33% -- -47%
long_lines-wc 25.6/s 168% 156% 150% 88% --
Rate short_lines-$count short_lines-s short_lines-$. short_lines-wc short_lines-tr
short_lines-$count 60.2/s -- -7% -11% -34% -42%
short_lines-s 64.5/s 7% -- -5% -30% -38%
short_lines-$. 67.6/s 12% 5% -- -26% -35%
short_lines-wc 91.7/s 52% 42% 36% -- -12%
short_lines-tr 104/s 73% 61% 54% 14% --
Rate varied_lines-$count varied_lines-s varied_lines-$. varied_lines-tr varied_lines-wc
varied_lines-$count 48.8/s -- -6% -8% -29% -36%
varied_lines-s 51.8/s 6% -- -2% -24% -32%
varied_lines-$. 52.9/s 8% 2% -- -23% -30%
varied_lines-tr 68.5/s 40% 32% 29% -- -10%
varied_lines-wc 75.8/s 55% 46% 43% 11% --
Here's the benchmark. I do have a control in there, but it's so fast I just don't bother with it. The first time you run it, the benchmark creates the test files and prints some stats about their line lengths:
use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);
use Statistics::Descriptive;
my @files = create_files();
open my( $outfh ), '>', 'bench-out';
foreach my $file ( @files )
{
cmpthese(
100, {
# "$file-io-control" => sub {
# open my( $fh ), '<', $file;
# print "Control found 99999 lines\n";
# },
"$file-\$count" => sub {
open my( $fh ), '<', $file;
my $count = 0;
while(<$fh>) { $count++ }
print $outfh "\$count found $count lines\n";
},
"$file-\$." => sub {
open my( $fh ), '<', $file;
1 while(<$fh>);
print $outfh "\$. found $. lines\n";
},
"$file-tr" => sub {
open my( $fh ), '<', $file;
my $lines = 0;
my $buffer;
while (sysread $fh, $buffer, 4096) {
$lines += ($buffer =~ tr/\n//);
}
print $outfh "tr found $lines lines \n";
},
"$file-s" => sub {
open my( $fh ), '<', $file;
my $lines = 0;
my $buffer;
while (sysread $fh, $buffer, 4096) {
$lines += ($buffer =~ s/\n//g);
}
print $outfh "s found $lines line\n";
},
"$file-wc" => sub {
my $lines = `wc -l $file`;
chomp( $lines );
print $outfh "wc found $lines line\n";
},
}
);
}
sub create_files
{
my @names;
my @files = (
[ qw( very_long_lines 10000 4000 5000 ) ],
[ qw( long_lines 10000 700 800 ) ],
[ qw( short_lines 10000 60 80 ) ],
[ qw( varied_lines 10000 10 200 ) ],
);
foreach my $tuple ( @files )
{
push @names, $tuple->[0];
next if -e $tuple->[0];
my $stats = create_file( @$tuple );
printf "%10s: %5.2f %5.f \n", $tuple->[0], $stats->mean, sqrt( $stats->variance );
}
return @names;
}
sub create_file
{
my( $name, $lines, $min, $max ) = @_;
my $stats = Statistics::Descriptive::Full->new();
open my( $fh ), '>', $name or die "Could not open $name: $!\n";
foreach ( 1 .. $lines )
{
my $line_length = $min + int rand( $max - $min );
$stats->add_data( $line_length );
print $fh 'a' x $line_length, "\n";
}
return $stats;
}
