Hi,

Your problem can be solved by making $myvar a global, either by using:

use vars qw|$myvar|;
$myvar = "...";
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or if you use perl 5.6:

our $myvar = "...";
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It can also be solved by letting the keys in that hash point to functions:

timethese(100000, { 
   Greedy  => sub { $myvar =~ /"(.*)"/ }, 
   Lazy    => sub { $myvar =~ /"(.*?)"/ }, 
   Negated => sub { $myvar =~ /"[^"]*"/ } 
});
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If the value of one of the keys is not a reference to a function, Benchmark is forced to eval your code - and when you eval a string all the variables referenced within it will be looked up in the stash (where all the symbols live) - they are treated as globals you could say. That's why it works when you make $myvar a non-lexical variable.

Autark.