Re: [Boost-users] boost.regex vs perl

From: John Maddock (john_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-11-22 04:46:53

Jin Sun wrote:
> Can anybody tell me which one has better performance?

Well it depends what you mean :-)

I'd be surprised if there was much difference between the core regex 
engines: maybe one would be slightly better at some things the other at 
different things.  Where you gain with Boost.Regex is in the ability to 
write the surrounding code in a compiled language rather than have it 
interpreted.  Whether you succeed in making your app faster as a result will 
mainly depend on how cunning you are at avoiding unnecessary copying/memory 
allocations in your code logic: to put it another way, badly written C++ can 
be the slowest thing around, while well written code can be as fast as any 
language out there.

Oh, and not all regular expressions are created equal: if the problem is the 
speed of the regex matching, then it's likely a problem with the regex 
you're using.

Just my - entirely biased - 2c, John Maddock.