#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

use Benchmark 'cmpthese';

my @string = (
        "foofoo catbar",
        "foofoofoo catbar",
        "foo foo cat bar",
        "foo flew over the",
        "cufoofoo nest",
);

cmpthese(50_000, {
        foo_or => sub { /^(foob|)foofoo/ foreach (@string) },
        foo_qs => sub { /^(foob)?foofoo/ foreach (@string) }
});

##</code><code>##

Benchmark: timing 50000 iterations of foo_or, foo_qs...
    foo_or:  2 wallclock secs ( 1.28 usr +  0.00 sys =  1.28 CPU) @ 39062.50/s (n=50000)
    foo_qs:  2 wallclock secs ( 1.21 usr +  0.00 sys =  1.21 CPU) @ 41322.31/s (n=50000)
          Rate foo_or foo_qs
foo_or 39062/s     --    -5%
foo_qs 41322/s     6%     --