That sounds like stuff that isn't implemented yet, not impediments to speed. Quoting and interpolation are mostly compile-time issues. Smart matching is on its

That sounds like stuff that isn't implemented yet, not impediments to speed. Quoting and interpolation are mostly compile-time issues. Smart matching is on its way out anyway... And the performance of Perl's regular expressions is rarely something that slows down actual code. Using it in the first place (instead of more specific parsing) might be an item, though...