Its pretty well the same thing as

Well, you might want to point out how it's different. Laziness is a tendency, not a mandate. Adding a trailing "Q" to both regex shows the difference:

"fooXbarYbarQ" =~ /(foo)(.{1,5}?)barQ/ # match entire string
[download]

will match, skipping over the first bar because it's not followed by Q. However, the previous regex, followed by a Q will fail:

"fooXbarYbarQ" =~ /(foo)(((?!bar).){1,5})barQ/ # won't match
[download]

because it can't "skip over" the first bar to get to the second one.

So, while lazy is good, it's not the only game in town, and you have to consider the rest of the regex before you know you can get away with lazy instead of inchworm.