Perl 5.6 has really done some good stuff to .*? -- you can see some proof here: 
cmpthese(-3, {
  cc => sub { "japhy{japhy}japhy" =~ /{[^}]*}/ },
  ds => sub { "japhy{japhy}japhy" =~ /{.*?}/ },
});
Benchmark: running cc, ds, each for at least 3 CPU seconds...
        cc:  72937.13/s (n=223917)
        ds:  76422.67/s (n=229268)
      Rate  cc  ds
cc 72937/s  -- -5%
ds 76423/s  5%  --


cmpthese(-3, {
  cc => sub { "this is an amazingly long string" =~ /\s[^l]*l/ },
  ds => sub { "this is an amazingly long string" =~ /\s.*?l/ },
});
Benchmark: running cc, ds, each for at least 3 CPU seconds...
        cc:  91565.26/s (n=282021)
        ds:  117002.10/s (n=390787)
       Rate   cc   ds
cc  91565/s   -- -22%
ds 117002/s  28%   --

[download]
It's been optimized when it's followed by a constant string.

_____________________________________________________
Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;

In reply to Ovid, Long Live .*? (dot star question-mark) by japhy

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