On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Leopold Toetsch wrote:
> $ parrot examples/assembly/pcre.imc "abcdef12" 'bc(.)([a-z]+)'
> abcdef12 =~ /bc(.)([a-z]+)/
> ok: 3 from 1 to 6 matched: 'bcdef'
> all matched: 'bcdef'
> (1) matched: 'd'
> (2) matched: 'ef'
>
> pcre.imc dynamically loads libpcre and performs a pattern match on the
> commandline args given.
>
> As its for sure useful[1] to have pattern matching available, the
> questions arise:
>
> Do we want PCRE in core?
No.
> Should it remain an external library?
> If the latter, some wrappers would be handy to simplify matching and
> extracting results.
Given that, for perl 5 code, we're going to have perl 5's real regex
engine, and for perl 6 in perl 5 compatibility mode PCRE is inadequate, I
don't think there's much point in PCRE as a long-term solution for
anything. Like it or not, we're going to have to reimplement perl 5's
regex compiler so it emits parrot bytecode.
Dan
