re question

[Darrell]

If you want to kill some real time try this:

import re
s='aaxx'*9999
re.findall('aa.*?bb', s)

My users can input such a pattern and find them self's stuck. Been playing
with ways to detect this and avoid the worst case runtime. Maybe something
about it in the "Mastering Regular Expression" book  ?

Attached a half baked swag at a solution. Split the pattern on '.*?' then
search from the end of the pattern to the front. And simulate the .*?

Something like this:
import myRe
s='aaxx'*9999
myRe.findallOptimize('aa.*?bb', 0, s)

I'd be happy with setting a time out and error callback on re.

--Darrell
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