--- pym/gentoolkit/helpers.py	2012-10-09 22:36:24.000000000 +0100
+++ pym/gentoolkit/helpers.py	2013-07-10 18:03:43.303888490 +0100
@@ -338,6 +338,46 @@
 
 		return paths
 
+	@staticmethod
+	def _filter_redundant_regexes(rs):
+		"""
+		Given a list of regular expressions to be joined via "|".join(),
+		removes those branches that have non-unique suffixes: 
+			['a$', 'ba$'] --> ['a$']
+		for the purpose of improving efficiency.  
+		
+		This is used in _prepare_search_regex to make filename matching
+		more efficient.
+
+		@type rs: list
+		@param rs: file path regular expressions each ending with '$'
+		@rtype: list
+		@return: list with possibly fewer branches
+		
+		@raise ValueError: if a regular expression does not end with '$'
+		"""
+
+		# sort in place
+		rs.sort(key= len, reverse= True)
+		rs_filtered = []
+
+		# keep a list item only if no suffix of it is present
+		for i in range(len(rs)):
+			found = False
+			for j in range(i + 1, len(rs)):
+				if rs[i].endswith(rs[j]):
+					found = True
+					break
+			if not found:
+				if not rs[i].endswith('$'):
+					raise ValueError(
+						"_filter_redundant_regexes needs all regexes to end with '$'")
+				rs_filtered.append(rs[i])
+
+		# we assume a search with very few hits; sort order is unimportant
+		return rs_filtered
+
+
 	def _prepare_search_regex(self, queries):
 		"""Create a regex out of the queries"""
 
@@ -357,7 +397,9 @@
 				else:
 					query = "/%s$" % re.escape(query)
 				result.append(query)
-		result = "|".join(result)
+
+		# remove same redundancy here, 9% improvement in run time with "equery belongs"
+		result = "|".join( self._filter_redundant_regexes(result) )
 		return result
 
 # =========