Generating all permutations from a regexp

[Thomas Ploch]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> Nick Craig-Wood wrote:
> 
>> A regular expression matcher uses a state machine to match strings.
> 
> unless it's the kind of regular expression matcher that doesn't use a 
> state machine, like the one in Python.
> 
> </F>
> 

How is the matching engine implemented then?

I thought regular languages can be described by deterministic /
non-deterministic finite state machines. I am just curious ...

Thomas