execution time: preg vs ereg vs explode & implode

Can anyone tell me if using explode is slower, or faster or nearly the same as using preg. I understand that preg is faster than ereg, is this true? How much faster? here's my code, i want to take a file that has {{{ or }}} and explode on both. should I use preg_split instead? Would it be faster? $ar = explode("{{{", $fileContents); $ar = implode(":::", $ar); $ar = explode("}}}", $ar); $ar = implode(":::", $ar); $ar = explode(":::", $ar); thanks, -timmyg