package re

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  2. Docs

Description

Pure OCaml regular expressions with:

  • Perl-style regular expressions (module Re.Perl)
  • Posix extended regular expressions (module Re.Posix)
  • Emacs-style regular expressions (module Re.Emacs)
  • Shell-style file globbing (module Re.Glob)
  • Compatibility layer for OCaml's built-in Str module (module Re.Str)

Published: 06 Aug 2018

README

Description

Re is a regular expression library for OCaml. Build Status

Contact

This library has been written by Jerome Vouillon (Jerome.Vouillon@pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr). It can be downloaded from https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-re

Bug reports, suggestions and contributions are welcome.

Features

The following styles of regular expressions are supported:

  • Perl-style regular expressions (module Re.Perl);
  • Posix extended regular expressions (module Re.Posix);
  • Emacs-style regular expressions (module Re.Emacs);
  • Shell-style file globbing (module Re.Glob).

It is also possible to build regular expressions by combining simpler regular expressions (module Re).

The most notable missing features are back-references and look-ahead/look-behind assertions.

There is also a subset of the PCRE interface available in the Re.Pcre module. This makes it easier to port code from that library to Re minimal changes.

Performances

The matches are performed by lazily building a DFA (deterministic finite automaton) from the regular expression. As a consequence, matching takes linear time in the length of the matched string.

The compilation of patterns is slower than with libraries using back-tracking, such as PCRE. But, once a large enough part of the DFA is built, matching is extremely fast.

Of course, for some combinations of regular expression and string, the part of the DFA that needs to be build is so large that this point is never reached, and matching will be slow. This is not expected to happen often in practice, and actually a lot of expressions that behaves badly with a backtracking implementation are very efficient with this implementation.

The library is at the moment entirely written in OCaml. As a consequence, regular expression matching is much slower when the library is compiled to bytecode than when it is compiled to native code.

Here are some timing results (Pentium III 500Mhz):

  • Scanning a 1Mb string containing only as, except for the last character which is a b, searching for the pattern aa?b (repeated 100 times):

    • RE: 2.6s
    • PCRE: 68s
  • Regular expression example from http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/ [1]

    • RE: 0.43s
    • PCRE: 3.68s

    [1] this page is no longer up but is available via the Internet Archive http://web.archive.org/web/20010429190941/http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/bench/regexmatch/

  • The large regular expression (about 2000 characters long) that Unison uses with my preference file to decide whether a file should be ignored or not. This expression is matched against a filename about 20000 times.

    • RE: 0.31s
    • PCRE: 3.7s However, RE is only faster than PCRE when there are more than about 300 filenames.

Dependencies (3)

  1. seq
  2. jbuilder >= "1.0+beta10"
  3. ocaml >= "4.02.3"

Dev Dependencies (1)

  1. ounit with-test

  1. alcotest
  2. alcotest-async
  3. alcotest-lwt
  4. alcotest-mirage
  5. atd = "2.2.1"
  6. atdcpp
  7. atdd
  8. atdgen >= "2.3.3"
  9. atdgen-runtime = "2.2.1"
  10. atdj >= "2.2.1"
  11. atdpy >= "2.4.1"
  12. atds < "2.3.3"
  13. atdts
  14. aws-config
  15. awsm-codegen
  16. BetterErrors
  17. bap-byteweight-frontend
  18. bap-callgraph-collator
  19. bap-fsi-benchmark
  20. bap-ida
  21. bap-objdump
  22. bap-print >= "2.2.0"
  23. bap-radare2
  24. benchpress
  25. bibfmt
  26. biocaml
  27. bistro < "0.6.0"
  28. bonsai >= "v0.15.0"
  29. calculon
  30. calculon-web
  31. caldav
  32. calendar >= "3.0.0"
  33. caqti >= "1.7.0"
  34. cinaps >= "v0.10.0"
  35. cohttp < "2.4.0"
  36. coin < "0.1.5"
  37. core_bench
  38. core_extended
  39. cowabloga >= "0.4.0"
  40. cuid
  41. daypack-lib
  42. debian-formats
  43. decompress < "1.0.0"
  44. dkml-install-installer >= "0.4.0"
  45. dns < "4.4.1"
  46. doi2bib
  47. dose3
  48. dune-glob >= "3.21.0"
  49. dune-release >= "0.2.0"
  50. dunolint >= "0.0.20251006"
  51. dunolint-lib
  52. dunolint-lib-base
  53. duppy >= "0.9.4"
  54. elpi
  55. expect_test_helpers_core
  56. expect_test_helpers_kernel
  57. ez_file
  58. ez_search
  59. fat-filesystem
  60. git-split < "0.0.4"
  61. graphql_parser >= "0.11.0"
  62. hardcaml_verify
  63. hardcaml_waveterm
  64. hardcaml_xilinx_components
  65. hlarp >= "0.0.3"
  66. horned_worm
  67. humane-re
  68. icalendar
  69. index
  70. index-bench < "1.3.2" | = "1.4.0"
  71. jingoo >= "1.2.21"
  72. js_of_ocaml-compiler >= "3.10.0"
  73. jsonschema
  74. jwt
  75. jwto
  76. kappa-library
  77. kubecaml
  78. labrys
  79. ldap >= "2.5.1"
  80. learn-ocaml
  81. ledes
  82. lipsum
  83. magic-trace
  84. mdx
  85. mparser-re
  86. naboris
  87. netsnmp
  88. nx-text
  89. obelisk >= "0.5.0"
  90. ocaml-lsp-server >= "1.9.0"
  91. ocamlformat >= "0.11.0" & < "0.25.1"
  92. ocamlformat-rpc < "0.21.0"
  93. ocp-build
  94. ocp-index < "1.2"
  95. ocsigen-start
  96. opam-bin >= "0.9.5" & < "1.1.0"
  97. opam-client < "2.1.0"
  98. opam-compiler
  99. opam-core < "2.1.0~beta4"
  100. opam-format >= "2.0.8" & < "2.1.0~beta4"
  101. opam-lib
  102. opam-solver >= "2.0.8" & < "2.1.0"
  103. opam_bin_lib
  104. opium
  105. opium_kernel
  106. oranger < "3.0.1"
  107. ostap < "0.6"
  108. ozulip
  109. patdiff
  110. pgocaml >= "2.3"
  111. pgx
  112. podge >= "0.3"
  113. ppx_css < "v0.17.0"
  114. ppx_cstubs
  115. ppx_expect < "v0.17.0"
  116. ppx_expect_nobase < "v0.17.3.0"
  117. ppx_minidebug >= "1.6.0"
  118. ppx_regexp >= "0.3.2"
  119. ppx_test
  120. ppx_tyre
  121. prometheus >= "0.2"
  122. prometheus-app
  123. redis
  124. regenerate
  125. rfc1951 < "1.0.0"
  126. safemoney >= "0.3.0"
  127. saga
  128. sarek
  129. sarif >= "0.2.1"
  130. semantic_version
  131. sexp_pretty
  132. simple-diff
  133. slug
  134. snf_mcp
  135. soupault < "3.2.0"
  136. spoc
  137. swagger
  138. talon
  139. tezos-stdlib-unix < "16.0"
  140. tezt
  141. touist >= "3.5.0"
  142. tyre < "0.5"
  143. tyxml >= "4.2.0"
  144. tyxml-syntax
  145. uri < "2.2.1"
  146. user-agent-parser
  147. user-setup
  148. uuuu < "0.4.0"
  149. validate
  150. vendredi
  151. wasm_of_ocaml-compiler
  152. webmachine
  153. xtmpl = "0.18.0"

Conflicts

None