From http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/The-Regex-Code-Review.aspx - python implementation of three alternatives

c.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import re

class Simple(object):
    def __init__(self, searchterms):
        self.__m_searchterms = searchterms

    def isMatch(self, text):
        for term in self.__m_searchterms:
            if term in text:
                return True
        return False

class RegexLocal(object):
    def __init__(self, searchterms):
        self.__m_searchterms = searchterms

    def isMatch(self, text):
        r = re.compile("|".join(( re.escape(term) for term in self.__m_searchterms )))
        return r.match(text)

class RegexPre(object):
    def __init__(self, searchterms):
        self.__m_r = re.compile("|".join(( re.escape(term) for term in searchterms )))

    def isMatch(self, text):
        return self.__m_r.match(text)

class Tester(object):
    def __init__(self, searcher, text):
        assert searcher is not None
        self.m_searcher = searcher
        self.m_text = text

    def __call__(self):
        self.m_searcher.isMatch(self.m_text)

import timeit
import random

import string

def genTerm(length=8, chars=string.letters + string.digits):
    return ''.join([random.choice(chars) for i in range(length)])


if len(sys.argv) > 1:
    termlen = int(sys.argv[1])
else:
    termlen = 8

if len(sys.argv) > 2:
    termcount = int(sys.argv[2])
else:
    termcount = 30

if len(sys.argv) > 3:
    textlen = int(sys.argv[3])
else:
    textlen = 10000

searchterms = []
for i in xrange(termcount):
    searchterms.append(genTerm(termlen))

text = genTerm(textlen)

s = Simple(searchterms)
rl = RegexLocal(searchterms)
rp = RegexPre(searchterms)

for r in [s,rl,rp]:
    assert r is not None
    t = Tester(r,text)
    print timeit.Timer(t).timeit(1000)