$ perl -we 'use Benchmark; use strict; use Fcntl; timethese( 5000000, { sysopen => sub { sysopen( my $F, "datei", O_WRONLY ) or die $! }, open => sub { open( my $F, ">datei" ) or die $! } } )' Benchmark: timing 5000000 iterations of open, sysopen... open: 57 wallclock secs (40.82 usr + 16.47 sys = 57.29 CPU) @ 87275.27/s (n=5000000) sysopen: 54 wallclock secs (39.85 usr + 13.77 sys = 53.62 CPU) @ 93248.79/s (n=5000000)