^Z
Benchmark: timing 1000000 iterations of regex1, regex2, substr...
regex1: 4 wallclock secs ( 4.00 usr + -0.02 sys = 3.98 CPU) @ 251004.02/s (n=1000000)
regex2: 3 wallclock secs ( 3.19 usr + 0.00 sys = 3.19 CPU) @ 313774.71/s (n=1000000)
substr: 0 wallclock secs ( 0.72 usr + 0.00 sys = 0.72 CPU) @ 1390820.58/s (n=1000000)
Perl 5.8.0, WinXP, AMD 1700XP