Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity

I decided to apply Benchmark to these various approaches. I first compiled a list of 9952 filenames, then sorted them 10**7 times ...

            CODE A: 39 wallclock secs 
                (38.50 usr +  0.00 sys = 38.50 CPU) @ 259740.26/s (n=10000000)

This says that his computer is sorting 9952 filenames 10000000 times in 39 seconds
That means it's sorting 9952 filenames in 3.9 microseconds
Not likely.