Re: regex maintenance?

[Paul Eggert]

address@hidden (Karl Berry) writes:

> I suspect all he cares about is the regex source in Emacs.

Yes, that's probably right.  In that case, I'm afraid his message
is not coherent enough for me to follow.  Perhaps if he gave
the specific problems he ran into, with the actual compiler output.

> So, should I recommend trying the gnulib regex files in Emacs?  Are
> there known incompatibilities?  Or would the glibc regex be a better
> bet?  (I doubt it, but.)

gnulib would be a better choice than glibc, but neither would be good
for Emacs, since glibc (and gnulib) have essentially dropped support
for the split-buffer code that Emacs needs for performance reasons.
The API is still there, but it's implemented slowly (by creating a
contiguous copy of the split buffer).

> And, please remind me in general how the gnulib and glibc regex are
> related at this point.

gnulib tracks glibc, but attempts to be more portable, and it
also conforms to POSIX better.

> Last I recall, we (you) were submitting
> tons of patches to glibc?

Yes.  Currently some of the standardization issues are being debated
at the POSIX level, so nothing is happening with the code proper.