C:\test>junk39 -N=1 #! perl -slw use strict; use Digest::MD5 qw[ md5 ]; use Benchmark qw[ cmpthese ]; our $data = pack '(Va16)*', map{ $_, md5( $_ ) } 1 .. 1000; ## 1000 data items our $N //= -1; cmpthese $N, { a => q[ my $c = 0; for my $i ( 1 .. 2000 ) { ## half should pass; half fail. my $iBin = pack( 'V', $i ); my $md5 = md5( $i ); my $p = 0; while( $p = 1+index $data, $iBin, $p ) { next if ( $p - 1 ) % 20; ++$c, last if substr( $data, $p+3, 16 ) eq $md5; } } print "a: $c" if $N == 1; ], b => q[ my $c = 0; for my $i ( 1 .. 2000 ) { ## Finds 10?? my $iBin = pack( 'V', $i ); my $md5 = md5( $i ); while( $data =~ m{\G(?:.{20})*?(?=\Q$iBin\E(.{16}))}g ) { pos( $data ) += 20; ++$c, last if $1 eq $md5; } } print "b: $c" if $N == 1; ], c => q[ use re 'eval'; my $c = 0; for my $i ( 1 .. 2000 ) { ## finds none?? my $iBin = pack( 'V', $i ); my $md5 = md5( $i ); while( $data =~ m[(?(?{ pos( $data ) % 20 })(*F)|\Q%iBin\E(.{16}))]g ) { ++$c, last if $1 eq $md5; } } print "c: $c" if $N == 1; ], }; __END__ C:\test>junk39 -N=1 a: 1000 b: 10 c: 0 Rate c a b c 0.111/s -- -99% -100% a 21.3/s 19117% -- -68% b 66.7/s 60113% 213% --