> Some difference, huh? > > Mike Is python doing something clever there? I'm not near an ubuntu box with a gui right now, but on fc5: $ time for i in $(seq 1 100000); do echo -n $i; done xterm: real 0m46.590s user 0m45.495s sys 0m1.019s gnome-terminal: real 0m48.430s user 0m45.343s sys 0m0.668s