OK, I kinda assumed that he gave a "typical" example of an input string, but you're right ofcourse - I should have tested across a wide range of values.

I should actually never have involved benchmarks, since the execution time of the subtitution is likely to be negligable compared to other parts of his application (whatever it may be), and is furthermore dependent on the input strings, on the platform, perl version, and possibly the phase of the moon.

But well, too late for that, the thread is now filled with benchmarks.. my fault :-)