Seeking regex optimizer

[Kay Schluehr]

Mirco,

with "special characters" I mentioned control characters of regular
expressions i.e. one of ".^$()?[]{}\|+*" but not non ascii-127
characters.

For a workaround you simply have to "mangle" those using an escape
control character:

REGEXCHAR = ".^$()?[]{}\\|+*"
def mangle(s):
    pattern = []
    for c in s:
        if c in REGEXCHAR:
            pattern.append("\\")
        pattern.append(c)
   return "".join(pattern)
 
Regards,
Kay