A quick note. Regexp::Assemble barfs on patterns containing ?{} in Perl 5.8.8 because of the error Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval' in regex m/.../. which is inside Assemble.pm in the _build_re routine's else clause. I didn't report this as a bug because under 5.8.8 you really should use the module's tracking feature, which contains the $^R workaround. Interestingly, modifying the module (I know, I know ;-) to add the use re 'eval'; line in that else clause makes the error disappear, but the resulting regexp doesn't work. My production code finally anticipates Perl 5.10 and just joins the individual expressions with |, and with the ?{acct} at the ends like Ikegami said, and the speedup was phenomenal! It can only get better with 5.10 trie building, but I'm not quite ready to upgrade my server yet.

SSF