Hi, I looked at the posts in the link you provided. one of the scenarios looks like exponential explosion when using alternations improperly (metioned in OReilly's book "Mastering Regular Exprssions" by J. Friedl). One of the solutions might be "unfolding" the alternations by using the following pattern: 
  <!--[^-]*(?:-[^-]+)*-->

[download]
which is supposed to be faster than your previous one.

Regards,
Xicheng

In reply to Re: Regex Problem - alternative searched by xicheng
in thread Regex Problem - alternative searched by Skeeve

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