I am very surprised at the slow execution cited by OP, as it does not match my experience, even when doing a regex replacement using NoteTab Pro on 5000+/- files of ca. 75 - 2K lines apiece.

But, FWIW (and not to get into a war over "best" editors), NoteTab Lite does NOT currently use perl syntax for RE's and -- AFAIK -- does NOT use the perl NOR PCRE regex engine.

But, for further "FWIW," doing so has been suggested (to favorable response) for the next version (at least for NoteTab Pro and Standard, < US$20 and ca. US$ 12, respectively).

I don't have any info on release date, but expect it will be announced fairly soon

Disclaimer-- node by a happy NoteTab Pro user