pcre, bifs, drivers and ports

[Mats Cronqvist]

Sean Hinde wrote:
> Hi Ernie,
> 
> On 1 Aug 2006, at 14:04, Ernie Makris wrote:
> [...]
>> If this is the case, then I can definitely see why a driver based pcre
>> should be preferable for a potentially long
>> running regex computation.

   seems to me that if regexps are allowed to be of unlimited size, and the 
regexp implementation is unable to yield, a bif is a bad choice.
   for our immediate problem, it is ok to limit the size of the regexp.

> I agree. Anytime the overhead of the driver call is small compared to 
> the work to be done then there seems little point in trying to optimise 
> away the overhead. Let's see if Mats' work ends up giving some nice 
> results - if he is happy to share.

   wise words from sean. we will try a driver version and compare. happiness is 
probably beyond us without the aid of prescription medicine, but we will share 
the results.

   mats