Second, I am curious as to why the split/join approach is so much faster than the fastest regular expression.

optimized optimizations are optimized, its often faster to trade memory for speed, see next part

will I get the same ranking of functions regardless of the length of string?

Test it out :) Re^3: Increasing the efficiency of a viral clonal expansion model , Re: Print in loop or store and print once done (bench)

In reply to Re: Question about regex performance by Anonymous Monk
in thread Question about regex performance by ted.byers

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