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.