use Perl

• It's a very nice article (Score:2)

  by bart (450)

  ... but I wish their conclusion wasn't so bozo:

  Regular expression matching can be simple and fast, using finite automata-based techniques that have been known for decades. In contrast, Perl, PCRE, Python, Ruby, Java, and many other languages have regular expression implementations based on recursive backtracking that are simple but can be excruciatingly slow.

  ... for pathetic expressions!

  We're indeed talking about the regular expression /a?a?a?aaa/ which no experienced Perl code would ever use in real code
  • Re:It's a very nice article (Score:1)

    by Aristotle (5147) <pagaltzis@gmx.de> on 2008.01.14 15:16 (#60227) Homepage Journal

    Rewrite it, for example, as

    /(?:a(?:a(?:a)?)?)?aaa/

    Err, come again? Surely you mean “/a{3,6}/”?

    Reply to This

    Parent

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bart (450)

      Even better. :)

      I'm just saying that every pathetic regexp can most likely be rewritten into something that is not pathetic witout much trouble — and possibly even be optimized.