bannor:~/work/perl/monks$ cat 968838.pl #!/usr/bin/env perl use Modern::Perl; use Benchmark qw(:all); my $str = 'A.SERIAL_NUMBER||abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'; my $ss = 'A.SERIAL_NUMBER||'; my $yay; cmpthese( 10_000_000, { 'substr' => sub { if(substr($str,0,length($ss)) eq $ss ){ $yay = 1; } }, 'regex' => sub { if( $str =~ /^\Q$ss\E/ ){ $yay = 1; } }, }); bannor:~/work/perl/monks$ perl 968838.pl Rate regex substr regex 1312336/s -- -65% substr 3802281/s 190% --