$ perl -MRegexp::Common=net -wle 'print $RE{net}{IPv4}' (?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]?[0-9]{1,2})[.](?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]?[0-9]{1,2})[.](?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]?[0-9]{1,2})[.](?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]?[0-9]{1,2})) #### #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; my $line = ('a' x 500) . 'b!' . ('a' x 20); use Benchmark qw( cmpthese ); cmpthese -3, { literal => sub {$line =~ /a.{1,10}b!/ }, class => sub {$line =~ /a.{1,10}[b][!]/}, }; __END__ Rate class literal class 3855/s -- -99% literal 712766/s 18390% --