unless there is a second '?', in which case it's entirely appropriate.
That's precisely where the exponential behaviour comes from; consider e.g. matching the pattern "a?a?a?aaa" against "aaa". It will try matching "a?" against the first "a", which succeeds, leading to a recursive call to match "a?a?aaa" with "aa". That eventually fails, so it tries matching "a?a?aaa" against "aaa"; and inside those two branches, it also splits into two depending on whether to match the "a?", etc. The result is, for each "a?" and "a" added, the total amount of work involved in matching doubles, so it is exponential.
That's precisely where the exponential behaviour comes from; consider e.g. matching the pattern "a?a?a?aaa" against "aaa". It will try matching "a?" against the first "a", which succeeds, leading to a recursive call to match "a?a?aaa" with "aa". That eventually fails, so it tries matching "a?a?aaa" against "aaa"; and inside those two branches, it also splits into two depending on whether to match the "a?", etc. The result is, for each "a?" and "a" added, the total amount of work involved in matching doubles, so it is exponential.