On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 12:52 PM, MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:

Hi all,

I re-implemented the re module, adding new features and speed
improvements. It's available at:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/regex

under the name "regex" so that it can be tried alongside "re".

I'd be interested in any comments or feedback. How does it compare with
"re" in terms of speed on real-world data? The benchmarks suggest it
should be faster, or at worst comparable.

How much interest would there be in putting it in Python 3.2?

A big +1 from me. I'm all for putting it in Python 3.2 alphas and beta1 as a *replacement* for the existing 're' module in order to get it visibility and a shakeout and make this available to the world sooner rather than later. This module was designed for compatibility for exactly that reason. Lets give it a high publicity fair shake it iron out any unknown compatibility issues early on so that we can decide how to proceed.

Also, +1 to Antoine's point on volunteering to be the maintainer of it for the next couple major releases.

(I do expect someone to balk at this idea with "but python 3.x doesn't have enough users yet for a beta cycle to shake out hidden regular expression engine assumption bugs" to which I'll respond in advance with "thats a good thing; we can add a regular expression sniffer to 2to3 that flags potential problems in code being ported over")

-gps