[Python-Dev] SRE: regex.set_syntax

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Fredrik Lundh writes:
 > 1) that lots of people are still using it, often for
 > performance reasons

  That's why I never converted Grail; the "re" layer around "pcre" was
substantially more expensive to use, and the HTML parser was way too
slow already.  (Displaying the result was still the slowest part, but
we were desparate for every little scrap!)

 > but alright, I think the consensus here is "(1) get rid
 > of it completely".  in 1.6a2, perhaps?

  I seem to recall a determination to toss it for Py3K (or Python 2,
as it was called at the time).  Note that Grail breaks completely as
soon as the module can't be imported.
  I'll propose a compromise: keep it in the set of modules that get
built by default, but remove the documentation sections from the
manual.  This will more strongly encourage migration for actively
maintained code.  I would be surprised if Grail is the only large
application which uses "regex" for performance reasons, and we don't
really *want* to break everything.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	  <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives