What is the best way to gunzip files with Perl?

Question

Is there a faster solution than my actual \'zcat\' solution to gunzip files with Perl?

A little benchmark:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;         


        

Answer 1

On typical desktop hardware, the zcat is all but certain to be I/O limited on non-trivial data (your sample files are awfully trivial, they'll be buffered for sure), in which case there isn't going to be any code-level optimization that will work for you. Spawning an external gzip seems perfect to me.