Mabooka % head -1 numbers.csv
462,393,252,996,663,603,344,439,139,259,879,766,545,192,477,986,317,77
+,611,303,79,742,190,556,538
Mabooka % wc -l numbers.csv
 500000 numbers.csv
Mabooka % 
Mabooka % time perl -lanF, -e 'print join ",", @F[0..4];' numbers.csv 
+> f1
27.820u 0.100s 0:27.92 100.0%   0+0k 0+0io 320pf+0w
Mabooka % time cut -d, -f"1-5" numbers.csv > f2
1.860u 0.100s 0:01.96 100.0%    0+0k 0+0io 100pf+0w
Mabooka % diff f1 f2
Mabooka %
[download]

So it's clear what to use (if it's a bottleneck problem rather than an academic disput).

Now, back to the original problem (sum up columns): on my system, for 500,000 it's negligible, so I tried with 5,000,000 x 25 cols:

Mabooka % time perl -nle'my($a,$b,$c,$d,$e)=split /,/;$ta+=$a, $tb+=$b
+, $tc+=$c, $td+=$d, $te+=$e;END{print join " ", $ta,$tb,$tc,$td,$te}'
+ numbers.csv
2499084140 2499188390 2500073650 2497725180 2495867770
45.270u 0.200s 0:45.44 100.0%   0+0k 0+0io 322pf+0w
Mabooka % 
Mabooka % time sum5.cut_n_awk
2499084140 2499188390 2500073650 2497725180 2495867770
18.520u 0.490s 0:12.52 151.8%   0+0k 0+0io 575pf+0w
Mabooka %
[download]

, where:

Mabooka % cat sum5.cut_n_awk
#
cat numbers.csv | cut -f1,2,3,4,5 -d, |awk -F, '{s1 += $1; s2 += $2; s
+3+= $3; s4+=$4; s5+=$5} END {printf  ("%.0f %.0f %.0f %.0f %.0f\n", s
+1, s2,s3,s4,s5)}'
[download]

3-4 times difference isn't bad. Maybe this would help...

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