how to handle repetitive regexp match checks

[Paul McGuire]

Matt -

Pyparsing may be of interest to you.  One of its core features is the
ability to associate an action method with a parsing pattern.  During
parsing, the action is called with the original source string, the
location within the string of the match, and the matched tokens.

Your code would look something like :

lbrace = Literal('{')
typedef = Literal('typedef')
struct = Literal('struct')
rx1 = struct + lbrace
rx2 = typedef + struct + lbrace
rx3 = Literal('something') + Literal('else')

def rx1Action(strg, loc, tokens):
... put stuff to do here...

rx1.setParseAction( rx1Action )
rx2.setParseAction( rx2Action )
rx3.setParseAction( rx3Action )

# read code into Python string variable 'code'
patterns = (rx1 | rx2 | rx3)
patterns.scanString( code )

(I've broken up some of your literals, which allows for intervening
variable whitespace - that is Literal('struct') +Literal('{') will
accommodate one, two, or more blanks (even line breaks) between the
'struct' and the '{'.)

Get pyparsing at http://pyparsing.sourceforge.net.

-- Paul