pcre, bifs, drivers and ports

[Mats Cronqvist]

Sean Hinde wrote:

> One more thing to think on - assuming that pcre itself is thread safe, 
> adding it as a driver would make multithreading quite straightforward. 

   i believe this is what OTP wants.

> Mats' comment about limiting length of REs does not really cut it IMO. 

   it is pretty lame, but better lameness today than perfection in the future.

> Blocking the whole emulator during a long regexp calculation rarely 
> sounds like the right solution for typical Erlang apps.

   that is of course totally unacceptable. so the bif will have to be able to 
yield (difficult), or refuse potentially long calculations (easy).

> But. It would be most fascinating to compare real world characteristics of:
> 
> 1. BIF pcre
> 2. Driver pcre,
> 3. BIF pcre in SMT erlang.

   indeed.

   mats