Re^2: pattern matching with large regex

[Tanktalus]

Looping will be slower? According to simonm, matching multiple times is faster than a single super-match. Only a benchmark of actual data will show for sure, but I've seen it said on PM many times already that multiple smaller matches are faster than single larger-matches. I'm presuming that simpler FSMs combined with less ability to backtrack has something to do with it. I'm not entirely sure, though.

[CountZero]

Indeed only benchmarking will do, as a lot depends on the data-set (are the regexes anchored or not; is there room for a lot of back-tracking, ...).