But the notion of an optimizing script interpreter is a bit far fetched ! But those numbers are unbelievably dramatic (too say the least!)...

Given the evidence - and since we used the OLE version of the kix script (which does everything the vbs script does) - I would say it has more to do with the way kix allocates and deallocates string vars ?

Here's that kix ole script we tried... it opens up some interesting possiblities for marrying the richness of vbs with kix...

code:

---

break on

$filename = "test.dat"
$filTest = val("&"+olecallfunc(olecreateobject("Scripting.FileSystemObject"), "opentextfile", "s", "$filename"))

?"@time"
$iTemp = 0
do
 $sTemp = olecallfunc($filTest,"readline")
 $iTemp = $iTemp + 1
until olegetproperty($filTest,"atendofstream") = "-1"
?"@time"
?"$iTemp lines"
$= olecallfunc($filTest,"close")
exit

---

Shawn.