Re: [Chicken-users] two minor tweaks to runtime.c

[Toby Thain]

On 28/09/11 11:33 PM, Alex Shinn wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Alan Post<address@hidden>  wrote:
> > How did irregex, which by account is slower, replace the existing
> > regex code?
>
> I didn't make the call, but as I understand that was motivated
> by portability concerns, simplifying the Chicken distribution,
> and avoiding the frequently occurring memory bugs in PCRE.
>
> So speed wasn't a concern, but there is a class of regexps
> for which irregex is exponentially faster than PCRE.

And if I am not mistaken this rationale is nicely given by Russ Cox:
http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html

--Toby