You're measuring the speed of a positive match. How about the speed of determining failure? That's an important factor too.
Jeff japhy Pinyan,
P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.:
Perl,
regex,
and perlhacker How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart
Comment on Re^3: Determining uniqueness in a string.