I think this case got a heavy speed up in 5.10.
Not in all cases. See Re: Unefficient Regexp 'Matching this or that'. For low and high numbers of alternations, it is actually a pessimisation.
In reply to Re^2: Unefficient Regexp 'Matching this or that'
by BrowserUk
in thread Unefficient Regexp 'Matching this or that'
by pelagic
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