(That should be "To determine the meaning of a token", fixed.)

Do you intend to say the outcome of the token or what the machine is supposed to do with the token?

Tokens don't have outcomes. They're data.

To answer your question, neither. I meant "For the tokeniser to determine which token to create for a given sequence of input bytes". (Or at a higher level, "For the parser to determine which opcode to create or error to throw for a given sequence of input bytes".)

For example, to determine whether "/" starts a pattern or if it's a division operator.

This isn't a perl problem. I know you know this. So what is this requirement on the parser that you are saying is a perl problem?

It hinders the ability to do useful things with Perl code by greatly extending the cost of doing so.