Re: [boost] [regex, xpressive] interesting(?) perf benchmark

Subject: Re: [boost] [regex, xpressive] interesting(?) perf benchmark
From: Christophe Henry (christophe.j.henry_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-06-07 15:40:14

>> How about a warning "you may not be using the optimal tool for the job"
>> until then?
>
> I'm having a hard time getting excited about that.

:)

>> Are the finite state machine libraries in Boost usable for this at all?
>
> I don't know. At BoostCon, Christophe presented some interesting results
> pitting MSM against xpressive for some simple regexing. An interesting
> research project would be to investigate whether xpressive's hybrid
> static/dynamic NFA design can be applied to DFAs as well, with similar
> perf wins. This would be a non-trivial undertaking, like completely
> reimplementing xpressive.

I think MSM could be a possibility, and it seems to be quite fast for
some cases.
I was actually thinking of handling static Xpressive as a
MSM-compatible front-end, so that the user could switch at will
between Xpressive and MSM, which happen to be complementary because
most performant on different types of regexes.
But there is a long way (and a fair number of technical issues)
between a toy example and a real library so it could take a while
before I get to it (besides, I am not a domain expert).

Note: there is an example provided with the BoostCon slides. I have
more and I can pack them with MSM's examples.

Christophe