I agree with Anonymous Monk.

Feel free to post your proposed regular expression. The other Perl Monks can give you tips on speeding it up.

There is a wealth of information on the Internet, in books, in videos from Perl conventions, in threads at the Perl Monks website, etc., regarding regular expressions and how to make them faster and more powerful.

But, if your only recourse is to resort to coding in XS, the other Perl Monks may advise you of that, too, after viewing your specific application.

I used to work for a guy and I would ask him "How do you do this?" Often, he would respond: "What are you trying to do?"

Re^3: Perl XS may be of interest to you.