I find speed differences of 20% neglectable.

I seem to remember¹ that Perl's regex engine got slower because of all the extra features added.

Real "Regexes" should be implemented as a high performance state machine, but perl is using op-codes now to cover those super features.

YMMV if it's worth the slow down...

Keep in mind that Ruby is/was half as fast as Perl and not many cared because of the observed "benefits".

In a world of scalable cloud computing, speed isn't anymore the decisive factor it used to be.

¹) I'm using this phrase often lately, but I posted too much here, and got tired double checking everything which was already written dozens of times.

So a cloud of doubt might motivate others to add detailed information. Otherwise there is no interest, and it was the right decision not to invest more time.