Is there a maximum length of a regular expression in python?

[Bryan Olson]

Roy Smith wrote:
>  olekristianvillabo at gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
>>I have a regular expression that is approximately 100k bytes. (It is
>>basically a list of all known norwegian postal numbers and the
>>corresponding place with | in between. I know this is not the intended
>>use for regular expressions, but it should nonetheless work.
>>
>>the pattern is
>>ur'(N-|NO-)?(5259 HJELLESTAD|4026 STAVANGER|4027 STAVANGER........|8305
>>SVOLVÆR)'
>>
>>The error message I get is:
>>RuntimeError: internal error in regular expression engine
> 
> 
> I don't know of any stated maximum length, but I'm not at all surprised 
> this causes the regex compiler to blow up.  This is clearly a case of regex 
> being the wrong tool for the job.

Does no one care about an internal error in the regular expression
engine?


-- 
--Bryan