Erlang downsides?

[Bob Ippolito]

On 8/31/06, James Hague <james.hague@REDACTED> wrote:
> On 8/31/06, Christian S <chsu79@REDACTED> wrote:
> > > > * Regular expression matching (there's a module, but watch Perl beat
> > > > it by a factor of 100).
> > >
> > > What language doesn't perl beat at regex?
> >
> > As far as I know perl's regexps are fast because C was used to
> > implement them. If we would see an implementation of perl in perl I
> > doubt its regexps would spank.
>
> Exactly.  And other dynamic languages--including Ruby and
> Python--simply link to the standard Perl regular expression library.
> In Erlang regular expression are slow because they're implemented
> entirely in high-level Erlang (which is simultaneously cool and slow).
>

Python definitely does not use PCRE. I was under the impression that
Ruby used Oniguruma, but I'm not sure because I don't use Ruby.

The regexp module in Erlang is slow because it's a simple
implementation and it doesn't cache compiled regular expressions. It
also doesn't support modern regex features that you get with Perl or
Python, making it even less attractive.

-bob