Given that study's benefits are difficult to predict, it might be best to just benchmark with and without, to see which version is quicker.

The Owls book (1st Edition: Mastering Regular Expressions) says:

• Don't use study when the target string is short.
• Don't use study when you plan only a few matches against the target string.
• Don't use study when Perl has no literal text cognizance for the regular expressions that you intend to benefit from the study. Without a known character that must appear in any match, study is useless.

Study is most useful when you are matching a large string many times and your regular expressions contain literal text that must be found within the string.

Study is also known to contain bugs in older versions of Perl, so use with caution.

The best advice I can give a novice is to ignore study and look for other ways to optimize your code. If you can't find any design solution that is fast enough for your needs, then try invoking study and benchmark to see if it helps or not. But in general, don't expect a miracle.

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