>sed is faster than AWK

Depends on the awk implementation and the task. However even gnu awk (gawk) is very fast and mawk is astonishing.

Here is a simple example: count the lines, words, and characters in a 65MB text file (10 copies of a novel stuck together).

Testing on Ubuntu GNU/linux 16.10 reporting middle of three tries:

  export LANG=ASCII    # avoid differences due to unicode
  $ time -p wc big10.txt 
   1284570 10956950 64886660 big10.txt
  real 0.29
  user 0.28
  sys 0.01
  $ time -p gawk '{l+=1; w+=NF; c+=length($0)+1} END {print l, w, c}' big10.txt
   1284570 10956950 64886660
  real 0.55
  user 0.53
  sys 0.01

Not bad, gawk is less than twice as slow as wc which is the standard tool for this.

  $ time -p mawk '{l+=1; w+=NF; c+=length($0)+1} END {print l, w, c}' big10.txt
   1284570 10956950 64886660
  real 0.35
  user 0.33
  sys 0.01

But mawk is only 20% slower than wc. For a script!

Just for a check, even python is not terrible at this:

  #!/usr/bin/python
  import sys
  l, w, c = 0, 0, 0
  for line in file(sys.argv[1], "rb"):
      l += 1
      w += len(line.split())
      c += len(line)
  print l, w, c
  
  $ time -p ./wc.py big10.txt 
  1284570 10956950 64886660
  real 0.87
  user 0.86
  sys 0.01

About 3 times slower than wc and mawk.

On a much slower computer...

  time -p wc big10.txt
  1284570 10956950 64886660 big10.txt

  real         2.76
  user         2.68
  sys          0.08

Trying this as novice with k3.

Because novice, 2 out of 3 counts are incorrect and probably not the fastest solution used.

Total "words" in the example was simply AWK's NF. But looking at big10.txt there anomalies such as words separated by "--" instead of space.

Here I used non-space character followed by space. Far from accurate but not too far.

  1.k: 
  w:0:"big10.txt";v:,/$w
  m:v _ss "[^ ] " / "word": char followed by space
  #w   / lines
  1+#m / words
  #v   / characters

  time -p k 1

  1284570
  10019630
  63602090

  real         2.70
  user         2.40
  sys          0.28

Counting lines with sed

  time -p wc -l big10.txt
  1284570 big10.txt

  real         0.13
  user         0.06
  sys          0.07

  sed -n '$!d;=' big10.txt
  1284570

  real         0.29
  user         0.19
  sys          0.09

That is a slow computer, mine is a pre-haswell i3.

  $ time -p sed -n '$!d;=' big10.txt
  1284570
  real 0.07
  user 0.06
  sys 0.00

  time -p mawk 'END {print NR}' big10.txt
  1284570
  real 0.04
  user 0.03
  sys 0.00

  $ time -p gawk 'END {print NR}' big10.txt
  1284570
  real 0.14
  user 0.13
  sys 0.00

  $ time -p wc -l big10.txt
  1284570 big10.txt
  real 0.02
  user 0.02
  sys 0.00

Revised 1.k.

  w:0:"big10.txt";v:{" ",x}'w;u:{#v[x] _ss " [^ ]"}'!#v;t:{#w[x]}'!#w

  #w / lines
  +/u / words
  +/t / chars

Counts for words and chars are closer but still short due to inexperience using k.

But it appears the script is now faster than wc.

  time -p wc big10.txt

  1284570 10956950 64886660 big10.txt
  real         2.78
  user         2.66
  sys          0.12

  time -p k 1

  1284570
  10956830
  63602090

  real         2.57
  user         2.42
  sys          0.14

How can I download big10.txt or the novel to recreate it?

big10.txt is just 10 copies of big.txt from the Peter Norvig spelling corrector essay [0].

[0] http://www.norvig.com/big.txt

Here is how spitbol script measures against wc.

As with k, I am lacking in spitbol experience and so the counts are not identical to wc. Also I am using 10MB of big10.txt instead of the entire file.

  1.spt:

  ;* m line count, c word count, o char count 
  ;* p word pattern

  ; n = "0123456789"
  ; w = n &ucase &lcase "-"
  ; p = break(w) span(w)
  ;a a = input :f(c)
  ;  o = o + size(a) 
  ;  m = m + 1
  ;b a ? p = :f(a)
  ;  c = c + 1 :(b)
  ;c output = m ' ' c ' ' o
  ;end

  dd if=big10.txt bs=5m count=2 of=10m.txt

  time -p wc 10m.txt

  201346 1763181 10485760 10m.txt
  real         0.51
  user         0.44
  sys          0.00

  time -p spitbol 1.spt < 10m.txt

  201347 1770831 10235302
  real         0.33
  user         0.31
  sys          0.01

It appears that spitbol script is faster than wc.