[Python-Dev] Should we move to replace re with regex? (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Sun Aug 28 02:48:02 CEST 2011

On 8/27/2011 7:39 PM, Greg Ewing wrote:

Nick Coghlan wrote:

The next step needed is for someone to volunteer to write and champion a PEP that: Would it be feasible and desirable to modify regex so that it is backwards-compatible with re, with a view to making it a drop-in replacement at some point? If not, the PEP should discuss this also.

Many of the things regex does differently might be called either bug fixes or feature changes, depending on one's viewpoint. Regex should definitely not be 'bug-compatible'.

I think regex should be unicode-standard compliant as much as possible, and let the chips fall where they may. If so, it would be like the decimal module, which closely tracks the IEEE decimal standard, rather than the binary float standard. Regex is already much more compliant than re, as shown by Tom Christiansen. This is pretty obviously intentional on MB's part. It is also probably intentional that re not match today's Unicode TR18 specifications.

These are reasons why both Ezio and I suggested on the tracker adding regex without deleting re. (I personally would not mind just replacing re with regex, but then I have no legacy re code to break. So I am not suggesting that out of respect for those who do.)

-- Terry Jan Reedy

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