Re: prior work on non-backtracking regex engine?

[Clément Pit-Claudel]

On 3/10/24 16:41, Danny McClanahan wrote:
> (3) Have there been prior investigations of non-backtracking regex engines in 
> emacs, or trying to use an external regex engine in general? What was the 
> outcome, and does it seem like a useful research direction?

Here is a relevant thread:

  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-12/msg00622.html

The gap is indeed a significant issue.

If you wanted linear-time support, my guess is your best bets today would be 
RE2, rust-regex, or the linear engine in Chromium/V8.  All of them would 
require sizable changes, and none would replace the existing engine because 
they don't support backreferences.  The one in Chromium is fairly small and 
simple.

Clément.