Why is regex so slow?

[Skip Montanaro]

> I don't understand why the first way is so much slower.

I have no obvious answers, but a couple suggestions:

1. Can you anchor the pattern at the beginning of the line?  (use
match() instead of search())
2. Does it get faster it you eliminate the "(.*)" part of the pattern?
 It seems that if you find a line matching the first part of the
pattern, you could just as easily split the line yourself instead of
creating a group.

Skip