Re: Future of our regular expression code

Brendan Jurd <direvus@gmail.com> writes:
> On 19 February 2012 06:52, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> Yeah ... if you *don't* know the difference between a DFA and an NFA,
>> you're likely to find yourself in over your head. �Having said that,
>> this is eminently learnable stuff and pretty self-contained, so somebody
>> who had the time and interest could make themselves into an expert in
>> a reasonable amount of time.

> I find myself in possession of both time and interest.  I have to
> admit up-front that I don't have experience with regex code, but I do
> have some experience with parsers generally, and I'd like to think
> some of that skillset would transfer to this problem.  I also find
> regexes fascinating and extremely useful, so learning more about them
> will be no hardship.

> I'd happily cede to an expert, should one appear, but otherwise I'm
> all for moving the regex code into a discrete library, and I'm
> volunteering to take a swing at it.

That sounds great.

BTW, if you don't have it already, I'd highly recommend getting a copy
of Friedl's "Mastering Regular Expressions".  It's aimed at users not
implementers, but there is a wealth of valuable context information in
there, as well as a really good not-too-technical overview of typical
implementation techniques for RE engines.  You'd probably still want one
of the more academic presentations such as the dragon book for
reference, but I think Freidl's take on it is extremely useful.
        regards, tom lane