[Python-Dev] Why Foo is better than Baz

[Andrew M. Kuchling]

Guido van Rossum writes:
>Possibly contradicting what I once said about DFAs (I have no idea
>what I said any more :-): I think we shouldn't be hung up about the
>subtleties of DFA vs. NFA; for most people, the Perl-compatibility
>simply means that they can use the same metacharacters.  My guess is

	I don't like slipping in such a change to the semantics with
no visible change to the module name or interface.  On the other hand,
if it's not NFA-based, then it can provide POSIX semantics without
danger of taking exponential time to determine the longest match.
BTW, there's an interesting reference, I assume to this code, in
_Mastering Regular Expressions_; Spencer is quoted on page 121 as
saying it's "at worst quadratic in text size.".

	Anyway, we can let it slide until a Python interface gets written.

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
In the black shadow of the Baba Yaga babies screamed and mothers miscarried;
milk soured and men went mad.
    -- In SANDMAN #38: "The Hunt"