>perl -v This is perl, v5.8.9 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread (with 9 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail) >perl -MBenchmark -lwe "my$x=q//; print timestr(timeit(eval($ARGV[0]),sub{$x .= (q/x/ x 100);}));" 10_000 33 wallclock secs (20.53 usr + 9.47 sys = 30.00 CPU) @ 333.32/s (n=10000)