[Python-3000] More wishful thinking

[Giovanni Bajo]

skip at pobox.com wrote:

>     Giovanni> Can't you put the global last-match object into TLS?
>
> What if you're not using threads?

Hey, that was *my* point.

For all the Python programs which don't use multi-threading, having a global
match object is a very important shortcut. It allows two main things: having
multiple if/elif regexp chains which do not add an indent level each time, and
have one less object around to care of. I think that in 99% percent of the
times I have been using the re module, I either wanted to use the match object
immediatly, or simply didn't care about it (just wanted to know whether there
was a match or not). I can't think a *single* case where I stored the match
object aside and used it later. Maybe because it's easier to immediately
extract the matched substrings and store *those* aside (since, after all, it's
the data you wanted to extract).

Multi-threading programs could be warned that the global match object is unsafe
and they should not use it. If you are really concerned of adding the global
match objects for threading programs too, the TLS thingie could be activated on
request, but I don't think it's worth.

Really, having the match objects is cute and good, but having the fast-path
shortcut (which would be taken 99% of times) is good as well.

Giovanni Bajo