The speed of the regex operation varies depending on the underlying regex engine utilized.
It is uncertain which method yields faster results in JavaScript.
Within PHP, employing a capture group may offer slight performance improvements. A comparison test can be conducted using a basic version of the provided regex pattern.
<?php
$string = "WORD1".str_repeat(" someword",100000);
$regex1="~WORD1(?:\s+\w+){0,2}~";
$regex2="~WORD1(\s+\w+){0,2}~";
$start=microtime(TRUE);
for ($i=1;$i<1000000;$i++) preg_match($regex1,$string);
$noncapend=microtime(TRUE);
for ($i=1;$i<1000000;$i++) preg_match($regex2,$string);
$withcapend=microtime(TRUE);
$noncap = $noncapend-$start;
$withcap = $withcapend-$noncapend;
$diff = 100*($withcap-$noncap)/$noncap;
echo "Non-Capture Group: ".$noncap."<br />";
echo "Capture Group: ".$withcap."<br />";
echo "difference: ".$diff." percent longer<br />";
?>
Result:
Note that outcomes may vary with each execution.
Non-Capture Group: 1.092001914978
Capture Group: 1.0608019828796
difference: -2.857131628658 percent longer