It's better to avoid the ? modifier in most cases, as it's less efficient as alternatives. Here's a benchmark: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Benchmark 'cmpthese';
use Test::More tests => 2;

our @data = qw 'foo123 abdbdr23 abcd2 abc 1234 foo!123';
our (@plain, @sticky);

my @expected = ([qw 'foo 123'], [qw 'abdbdr 23'], [qw 'abcd 2'],
                ['abc', ''], ['', 1234], []);

cmpthese -1, {
    plain   => '@plain  = map {[/^([a-z]*)(\d*)$/]} @data',
    sticky  => '@sticky = map {[/^(\w*?)(\d*)$/]} @data',
};

is_deeply \@plain, \@expected;
is_deeply \@sticky, \@expected;

__END__
1..2
          Rate sticky  plain
sticky 32582/s     --   -17%
plain  39385/s    21%     --
ok 1
ok 2

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Perl --((8:>*

In reply to Re^2: Simple regular expression problem by Perl Mouse
in thread Simple regular expression problem by jeanluca

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