[erlang-questions] builtin regexp functions in Erlang/OTP R12B-3

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

On 17 Jun 2008, at 3:53 am, Mats Cronqvist wrote:
> i'd like to add this the EEP11;
>
> since implementing regular expressions with backreferences is an NP- 
> complete problem, "re" disallows backreferences. this is achieved by  
> calling pcre_fullinfo() and requiring that PCRE_INFO_BACKREFMAX == 0.

It's also advisable to disallow everything non-POSIX.
That then becomes a reasonable strategy for trying things out,
but PCRE's support for all the cruft gets in the way of efficiency,
so it's not really the ideal long-term strategy.