diff(1)

[Brian Fundakowski Feldman]

On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 04:06:20PM -0700, Sean Chittenden wrote:
> >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."

I'll certainly have to try it out and see whether or not it's faster
than Oniguruma (http://www.geocities.jp/kosako1/oniguruma/).  Either
one should be more than suitable for libc if it's got enough of a
performance improvement.

-- 
Brian Fundakowski Feldman                           \'[ FreeBSD ]''''''''''\
  <> green at FreeBSD.org                               \  The Power to Serve! \
 Opinions expressed are my own.                       \,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,\