barachiel@dreckskind:~$ perl -mBenchmark
Benchmark::timethese(10000000, { 'substr' => sub { substr("hanspeter", 0, 1); }, 'regex' => sub { "hanspeter" =~ m/^(.)/; } });
^D
Benchmark: timing 10000000 iterations of regex, substr...
     regex:  7 wallclock secs ( 5.27 usr +  0.03 sys =  5.30 CPU) @ 1886792.45/s (n=10000000)
    substr:  2 wallclock secs ( 1.81 usr +  0.00 sys =  1.81 CPU) @ 5524861.88/s (n=10000000)