In 2014, it looks like character processing and regex processing take the same amount of time:
 
$ date
Thu Oct 16 00:28:38 PDT 2014

$ time ./sample.pl; time ./wrap_prop-regex_slow.pl 

This is a bit of text that forms a normal book-style paragraph. 
Supercajafrajalisticexpialadocious!
real	0m0.057s
user	0m0.052s
sys	0m0.006s

This is a bit of text that forms a normal book-style paragraph. 
Supercajafrajalisticexpialadocious!
real	0m0.057s
user	0m0.054s
sys	0m0.003s

