diff(1)

[Sean Chittenden]

> I don't know how much they've changed it, but I do know that it still
> uses whichever regexp engine you happen to have in libc.  In our case,
> that means good old Henry Spencer.  Last I talked to him, he was going
> to release a new, improved, and much faster regexp engine, but that
> was years ago and I still haven't seen anything come out of it.

Actually, that's not quite correct.  Spencer's latest regexp(3) was 
integrated into PostgreSQL 7.4 to provide wide-byte regexp support 
(released on 2003-11-17).  Last I checked, it was being used regularly 
and with good success as it's gotten a good ten months of production 
use.  :)

 From the PostgreSQL 7.4 release notes:

	"Faster and more powerful regular expression code

	"The entire regular expression module has been replaced with a  new 
version by Henry Spencer, originally written for Tcl. The  code greatly 
improves performance and supports several flavors  of regular 
expressions."

-sc

-- 
Sean Chittenden