ColdFusion IsValid("regex") vs reFind() vs Java Regex Pattern

I was recently notified of a slow ColdFusion script on a project and, after some isolation, determined that it was due to a regex-based UDF that we used in place of Adobe's built-in function (BIF) for isValid("url"). We used a regex rule with isValid("regex") to validate only HTTP/S URLs with valid hostname TLDs and the application was validating ~1,1000 strings from a database and taking ~1.5 seconds to perform.

Brad Wood recently blogged about improving the performance of Lucee's QofQ and he noted that "Adobe CF re-compiles the regex every single time". After reading that, I wondered if the same thing was happening with isValid("regex"). I'm not sure if it does or not, but if I had to guess, I'd say 'it depends'. CF2021 performance appears to be notably better than past performance, so it's possible. I was more concerned with cross-platform performance on both Adobe ColdFusion and Lucee CFML platforms, comparing and determining the best/fastest approach. I wrote a Short, Self Contained, Correct (Compilable), Example (SSCCE) so I could compare multiple CFML engines using either CommandBox or TryCF.com.

As a result of using a cached java regex pattern, the webpage processing time when from the absurdly slow 1-2 seconds to a more efficient 150ms.

Here are some preliminary performance comparisons of isValid("regex") versus reFind() versus a cached java regex pattern.

CFTry w/1,000 iterations (2022-12-02)

What's interesting is that tests seemed to run faster after executing it a couple times on TryCF. The cached java pattern remained significantly faster in every test and Lucee's isValid() is much slower than using reFind.

CFTry w/1 iteration (2022-12-02)

SSCCE Code

https://gist.github.com/JamoCA/e8c2ab5815bb26db58ff4024a86c533c