It's fairly easy to use Benchmark to try out different solutions and see which is fastest. Here's a sample of testing multiple regexps (your original solution), one big regexp, and using index:
#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use Benchmark; our @list = ('create the world','blah blah', 'drop it already','foo schnerp', 'need to delete','flip schnitzel', 'send me that update!','a flibbertygibitz', 'mailing insert collection','grand central station'); our @wordlist = qw(create drop delete update insert); our @relist = map { qr/\b$_\b/ } @wordlist; our $bigre_t = '\b(?:'.join('|',@wordlist).')\b'; our $bigre = qr/$bigre_t/; print "bigre: $bigre\n"; sub several_re { my $match = 0; foreach my $s (@list) { foreach my $re (@relist) { if ($s =~ /$re/) { $match++; last; } } } $match; } sub one_re { my $match = 0; foreach my $s (@list) { if ($s =~ /$bigre/) { $match++; } } $match; } sub use_index { my $match = 0; foreach my $s (@list) { foreach my $word (@wordlist) { if (index($s,$word) >= 0) { $match++; last; } } } $match; } print "several_re: ", several_re(),"\n"; print "one_re: ", one_re(),"\n"; print "use_index: ", use_index(),"\n"; timethese(100_000, { 'Several Regexp' => \&several_re, 'One Big Regexp' => \&one_re, 'With index()' => \&use_index, });

In this benchmark, the one big regexp solution is fastest:

Benchmark: timing 100000 iterations... One Big Regexp: 7 wallclock secs (6.22 CPU) @ 16077.17/s (n=100000) Several Regexp: 12 wallclock secs (11.27 CPU) @ 8873.11/s (n=100000) With index(): 11 wallclock secs (8.71 CPU) @ 11481.06/s (n=100000)
But the results you get running on your own data will be more useful.

In reply to Re: speeding up a regex by sgifford
in thread speeding up a regex by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.