The Regex::Presuf module can be used to build regular expressions out of 'word lists', lists of strings. The regular expression matches the same words as the word list. These regular expressions normally run few dozen percentages faster than a simple-minded '|'-concatenation of the words. Install by perl Makefile.PL make make test make install Then proceed by reading the actual documentation contained in the PreSuf.pm, if make install went fine, "perldoc Regex::PreSuf" should work. Enjoy, Jarkko