Benchmark: timing 100000 iterations... One Big Regexp: 7 wallclock secs (6.22 CPU) @ 16077.17/s (n=100000) Several Regexp: 12 wallclock secs (11.27 CPU) @ 8873.11/s (n=100000) With index(): 11 wallclock secs (8.71 CPU) @ 11481.06/s (n=100000)