I'm well aware of how to time the execution of a command, but timing the command on my Cygwin system - itself not very representative of most systems that bash is running on - would have told me nothing about which method would be in theory faster to run.

Your question does not mention the use of Cygwin. The moderator who closed your question, for not being clear, provided several potential references that you could use to clarify your question. In my opinion, I don't believe your question should be reopened since you have not clarified your question by editing it.

The answer that I'm looking for is clearly stated: something that includes an actual understanding of the theoretical differences between the two implementations in their function, and how those theoretical differences affect the speed of the two, with benchmarks being optional. This is something that someone with knowledge of bash's inner workings would readily know of, and I've seen many such questions across the Stack Exchange network, including on SU.

You are right. What you are looking for is indeed programming, like one very familiar with a bash script, and perhaps even familiar with the source code to bash itself. Unfourtantly, your not likely to find that very specific person on Super User since we are not typically programmers.

Therefore, I believe that prioritizing my benchmarks would result in an overly myopic take on the question that misses the much broader, more useful question being asked.

In this case, additional information from your benchmark runs would have helped. We are not necessarily looking for broad questions; we are looking for questions that have been researched and are about practical problems within the scope of our help center.

As it's currently written, your question is unlikely to garner the required votes to be reopened, unless you clarify your question. It certrainly could not hurt to provide some improvement to your question.

I'm well aware of how to time the execution of a command, but timing the command on my Cygwin system - itself not very representative of most systems that bash is running on - would have told me nothing about which method would be in theory faster to run.

Your question does not mention the use of Cygwin. The moderator who closed your question, for not being clear, provided several potential references that you could use to clarify your question.

The answer that I'm looking for is clearly stated: something that includes an actual understanding of the theoretical differences between the two implementations in their function, and how those theoretical differences affect the speed of the two, with benchmarks being optional. This is something that someone with knowledge of bash's inner workings would readily know of, and I've seen many such questions across the Stack Exchange network, including on SU.

You are right. What you are looking for is indeed programming, like one very familiar with a bash script, and perhaps even familiar with the source code to bash itself. Unfourtantly, your not likely to find that very specific person on Super User since we are not typically programmers.

Therefore, I believe that prioritizing my benchmarks would result in an overly myopic take on the question that misses the much broader, more useful question being asked.

In this case, additional information from your benchmark runs would have helped. We are not necessarily looking for broad questions; we are looking for questions that have been researched and are about practical problems within the scope of our help center.

As it's currently written, your question is unlikely to garner the required votes to be reopened, unless you clarify your question. It certainly could not hurt to provide some improvement to your question.

My question doesn't mention the use of Cygwin because it's unnecessary detail.

I don't use bash very often, but from what I have experience on my own Unix and Linux systems, it certainly seems to be Cygwin would impact what any potential answers.

I have made a slight edit to the question to make it clearer what I'm after, but aside from that, I cannot see how the question can be improved any further without changing the focus of it.

This slight edit was enough for me to justify a reopen vote.