My Python code is filled with assignments of regexp objects to globals variables at the top level; e.g.:
_spam_re = re.compile('^(?:ham|eggs)$', re.I) Don't like it. My Perl-pickled brain wishes that re.compile was a memoizing method, so that I could use it anywhere, even inside tight loops, without ever having to worry about the overhead of regexp compilation. Of course, I can do the memoization myself. Would it be a bad idea? How much state does a re object keep? Or to put it differently, what should be avoided to keep a regexp object essentially "stateless", so that its memoization makes sense? TIA! kynn -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list