What I can't understand is why Carl-Adam's C# code was so enormously
much slower (why are you mumbling 77 times faster when in fact it is
closer to a thousand times?), but I guess it is to be expected from a
M$ invention...

This also may be due to the fact it use the date() function, not the real run time.

Carl-Adam, had you pre-heated the buffer cache before running your
test. If not, could you please do so and rerun it? I just can't
imagine even .net would be _that_ slow.

no need for imagination, it is reality ;)

Eric