On a ppc mini g4 (1.25MHz). $ LC_CTYPE=C time grep pool messages > /dev/null 0.01 real 0.00 user 0.00 sys
but in a UTF-8 locale: $ LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 time grep pool messages > /dev/null 9.54 real 9.38 user 0.01 sys though when there are no matches: $ LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 time grep fool messages > /dev/null 0.05 real 0.03 user 0.01 sys So a UTF-8 locale seems to make grep unusable for practical purposes. %-O -uwe