More effecient? Probably not ... but definetly easier to read and more idiomatic. Look for "capturing" in perlre.

#!/usr/bin/perl -wd

use strict;
use Benchmark;

timethese( 50000, {
   'regex'     => sub { &regex(); },
   'ind_sub'   => sub { &ind_sub(); },
   }
);

sub regex {
   $_ = "abchelloxyz";
   m/abc(.*?)xyz/;
   my $bar = $1;
}

sub ind_sub {
   $_ = "abchelloxyz";
   my $x = index( $_, "abc") + 3;
   my $y = index( $_, "xyz");
   my $bar = substr( $_, $x, $y - $x);
}
[download]

-derby