package re

  1. Overview
  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)

Added to opam-repository:

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. dune
  3. ocaml >= "4.08"

Dev Dependencies (1)

  1. ounit with-test

  1. alcotest
  2. alcotest-async
  3. alcotest-lwt
  4. alcotest-mirage
  5. atd >= "2.2.1"
  6. atd-jsonlike
  7. atdcpp
  8. atdd
  9. atdgen >= "2.3.3"
  10. atdgen-runtime = "2.2.1"
  11. atdj >= "2.2.1"
  12. atdpy >= "2.4.1"
  13. atds < "2.3.3"
  14. atdts
  15. aws-config
  16. awsm-codegen
  17. awso
  18. BetterErrors
  19. bancos
  20. bap-byteweight-frontend
  21. bap-callgraph-collator
  22. bap-fsi-benchmark
  23. bap-ida
  24. bap-objdump
  25. bap-print
  26. bap-radare2
  27. bibfmt
  28. biocaml
  29. bonsai >= "v0.15.0"
  30. brot
  31. calculon
  32. calculon-web
  33. caldav
  34. calendar >= "3.0.0"
  35. camyll
  36. caqti >= "1.7.0"
  37. cascade
  38. catala != "0.8.0" & < "0.10.0"
  39. cinaps
  40. cohttp
  41. coin < "0.1.5"
  42. conan < "0.0.5"
  43. core_bench
  44. core_extended
  45. cosovo
  46. cowabloga >= "0.4.0"
  47. cucumber
  48. cuid
  49. current
  50. current_web
  51. daypack-lib
  52. debian-formats
  53. decompress < "1.0.0"
  54. dns < "4.4.1"
  55. doi2bib
  56. dose3
  57. dune-glob >= "3.21.0"
  58. dune-release >= "0.2.0"
  59. dunolint >= "0.0.20251006"
  60. dunolint-lib
  61. dunolint-lib-base
  62. duppy >= "0.9.5"
  63. elpi
  64. expect_test_helpers_core
  65. expect_test_helpers_kernel
  66. ez_file
  67. ez_search
  68. fat-filesystem
  69. git-split < "0.0.4"
  70. gpiod
  71. graphql_parser >= "0.11.0"
  72. hardcaml_verify
  73. hardcaml_waveterm
  74. hardcaml_xilinx_components
  75. hlarp >= "0.0.3"
  76. humane-re
  77. icalendar
  78. index
  79. index-bench
  80. irmin-bench
  81. jingoo >= "1.2.21"
  82. js_of_ocaml >= "3.10.0"
  83. js_of_ocaml-compiler >= "3.10.0"
  84. js_of_ocaml-lwt >= "3.10.0"
  85. js_of_ocaml-ocamlbuild >= "3.10.0" & < "5.0"
  86. js_of_ocaml-ppx >= "3.10.0"
  87. js_of_ocaml-ppx_deriving_json >= "3.10.0"
  88. js_of_ocaml-toplevel >= "3.10.0"
  89. js_of_ocaml-tyxml >= "3.10.0"
  90. jsonschema
  91. jwt
  92. jwto
  93. kappa-library
  94. kubecaml
  95. ldap >= "2.5.1"
  96. learn-ocaml
  97. ledes
  98. lipsum
  99. magic-trace
  100. mdx
  101. mnet-cli >= "0.0.3" & < "0.0.8"
  102. mparser-re
  103. naboris
  104. netsnmp
  105. nx-text
  106. obelisk >= "0.5.0"
  107. ocaml-lsp-server >= "1.9.0"
  108. ocamlformat < "0.25.1"
  109. ocamlformat-rpc < "0.21.0"
  110. ocgtk < "0.1~preview2"
  111. ocp-build
  112. ocp-index
  113. ocsigen-start
  114. opam-bin >= "0.9.5" & < "1.1.0"
  115. opam-client < "2.2.0"
  116. opam-compiler
  117. opam-core < "2.6.0~alpha1"
  118. opam-format >= "2.0.8" & != "2.1.0~beta4" & < "2.6.0~alpha1"
  119. opam-lib
  120. opam-solver >= "2.0.8" & < "2.1.0" | >= "2.2.0" & < "2.6.0~alpha1"
  121. opam-state >= "2.2.0" & < "2.6.0~alpha1"
  122. opam_bin_lib
  123. opium
  124. opium_kernel
  125. oranger
  126. ostap < "0.6"
  127. ozulip
  128. parseff
  129. patdiff
  130. pgocaml >= "2.3"
  131. pgx
  132. plato
  133. playwright
  134. podge >= "0.3"
  135. ppx_css < "v0.17.0"
  136. ppx_cstubs
  137. ppx_elpi
  138. ppx_expect < "v0.17.0"
  139. ppx_expect_nobase = "v0.17.2.2"
  140. ppx_mikmatch
  141. ppx_minidebug >= "1.6.0"
  142. ppx_regexp >= "0.3.2"
  143. ppx_test
  144. ppx_tyre
  145. ppxlib >= "0.21.1"
  146. prometheus >= "0.2"
  147. prometheus-app < "2.0"
  148. prometheus-reporter
  149. rdf < "0.13.0"
  150. redis
  151. rfc1951 < "1.0.0"
  152. safemoney >= "0.3.0"
  153. saga
  154. sarek
  155. sarif >= "0.2.1"
  156. satyrographos
  157. semantic_version
  158. sexp_pretty
  159. simple-diff
  160. slug
  161. smtml >= "0.21.0"
  162. snf_mcp
  163. sosie
  164. soupault
  165. spoc
  166. stem
  167. swagger
  168. talon < "1.0.0~alpha3"
  169. tezt
  170. timere-parse
  171. touist >= "3.5.0"
  172. tw < "1.1.0"
  173. tyre >= "0.4"
  174. tyxml >= "4.2.0"
  175. tyxml-ppx >= "5.0.0"
  176. tyxml-syntax
  177. unic
  178. uri < "4.0.0"
  179. uri-re
  180. user-agent-parser
  181. user-setup
  182. uuuu < "0.4.0"
  183. validate
  184. vendredi
  185. wasm_of_ocaml-compiler
  186. webmachine
  187. wire < "1.0.0"
  188. xtmpl = "0.18.0"

Conflicts

None