[Python-Dev] interesting article on regex performance (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Fri Mar 12 17:12:23 CET 2010

Peter Portante wrote:

http://code.google.com/p/re2/

On 3/11/10 8:52 PM, "Neal Becker" <ndbecker2 at gmail.com> wrote:

http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html

Both interesting links. I'll add another one to the list: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/03/re2-principled-approach-to-regular.html

To bring this on-topic for python-dev by considering how it could apply to Python's default re engine, I think the key issue is that any updates to the default engine would need to remain backwards compatible with all of the tricks that re2 doesn't support.

There are major practical problems associated with making such a leap directly (Google's re2 engine is in C++ rather than C and we'd have to keep the existing implementation around regardless to handle the features that re2 doesn't support).

I would say it is better to let re2 bake for a while and see if anyone is motivated to come up with Python bindings for it and release them on PyPI. Once that happens (and assuming the bindings earn a good reputation), the first step towards integration would be to include a "See Also" in the re module documentation to point people towards the more limited (but more robust) regex engine implementation.

The next step would probably be a hybrid third party library that exploits the NFA approach when it can, but resorts to backtracking when it has to in order to handle full regex functionality. (Although developers would need to be able to disable the backtracking support in order to restore re2's guarantees of linear time execution)

Only once such a hybrid library had been proven in practice could the default re module be considered for possible update.

Basically, I see some interesting ideas there, but I don't see anything that will impact the Python core or standard library in the short term.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

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