It depends on the reasons you want to put it in a database. If it's just for faster queries, I doubt that MySQL is able to generate indices to speed up searches you want to do. Which means that both MySQL, and Perl have to scan all records. In that case, it's just a matter of whose ability to read for disk and speed of the regex engine is faster.

There could of course be other reasons why keeping your data in a database has advantages over a flatfile. But for many of those reasons, MySQL wouldn't give advantages over a flatfile. Other databases would, though.

Abigail