Thanks to all for feedback. I did get much more than 2x speed increase for greedy vs. not because my line to match is quite long. Taking what I've learned from the thread, I did some comparisons. 
use Benchmark qw/cmpthese/;
                                                  
my $line = 'rs11502186 C/G Chr11 170472 + ncbi_b34 perlegen urn:lsid:p
+erlegen.hapmap.org:Protocol:Genotyping_1.0.0:2 urn:lsid:perlegen.hapm
+ap.org:Assay:25763.7541533:1 urn:lsid:dcc.hapmap.org:Panel:CEPH-30-tr
+ios:1 QC+ GG GG GG NN GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG
+ GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG NN
+ GG GG GG NN GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG NN GG GG GG GG NN
+ GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG GG
+ GG GG GG GG GG GG';


cmpthese(-1, 
     {                             
            'Greedy' => sub {$line =~ /(chr.*?)\s.*urn:lsid:(.*?)\s.*p
+anel:(.*?):/i},             
            'Non' => sub {$line =~ /(chr.*?)\s.*?urn:lsid:(.*?)\s.*?pa
+nel:(.*?):/i},              
            'Sep' => sub {$line =~ /(chr.*?)\s/i;
                          $line =~ /urn:lsid:(.*?)\s/i;
                          $line =~ /panel:(.*?):/i;
                      },                          
            'Death_star' => sub {$line =~ /(chr[^\s]+)/i;
                          $line =~ /urn:lsid:([^\s]+)/i;
                          $line =~ /panel:([^:]+)/i; 
                     } 
      }
);

[download]
Giving the following results: 
               Rate     Greedy        Sep        Non Death_star
Greedy       8650/s         --       -95%       -95%       -97%
Sep        157827/s      1725%         --        -6%       -41%
Non        167020/s      1831%         6%         --       -38%
Death_star 267963/s      2998%        70%        60%         --

[download]
Killing the star is clearly the way to go. Thanks to the Monks which helped me learn something.

-albert

In reply to Re^2: Regex, capturing variables vs. speed by albert
in thread Regex, capturing variables vs. speed by albert

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