Re^3: Not able to capture information

[Don Coyote]

List assignment, also another good modification overlooked here. The difference between them being that undefined scalars are created, possibly unnecessarily, before each regexp test. Where in scalar assignment the match will have been tested before scalars are created. No biggie, but how would we go about making comparisons for such details? I would like to think on.

I did consider amending toothpicks in the original regexp. But for time and the regexp was already dealt with by first response. I did not mind for my substitution as was a very short substition.

Pipe is syntactically correct, but due to it's general usage I would probably pick a different symbol. Each to their own here.

[Marshall]

For timing comparisons, the Benchmark module is excellent.

I tend to write the most straight forward code first and then tweak when necessary. I recently had a project where I changed just a single regex line and it cut 2 minutes off a 10 minute run time! If you do anything, no matter how simple enough millions of times, it adds up. Considerable experimentation can be required. In this particular case, I don't know without measuring what the performance difference would be.

Anyway, I think the OP has a number of fine examples of different approaches.