[Python-Dev] Some questions about maintenance of the regular expression code.

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Gary Herron wrote:
> The first glance at the regular expression bug list and the _sre.c
> code results in the observation that several of the bugs are related
> to running over the recursion limit.  The problem comes from using a
> pattern containing ".*?" in a situation where it is expected to match
> many thousands of characters.  Each character matched by ".*?" causes
> one level or recursion, quickly overflowing the recursion limit.

Wouldn't it be possible for the RE compiler to issue a warning in
case these kind of patterns are used ? This would be much more helpful
than trying to work-around the user problem.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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