% time perl -lne 'BEGIN{ $,=","}; print+(split ",")[0..14]' numbers.csv \ > /dev/null 12.65s user 0.01s system 98% cpu 12.890 total % time perl -le 'open IN, q(cut -d, -f"1-15" numbers.csv|); \ print join ",", ( chomp and split /,/ ) while ' > dev/null 8.17s user 0.01s system 90% cpu 9.070 total