Author: Philip Hazel Date: To: ND CC: Pcre-dev Subject: Re: [pcre-dev] (*MARK)
On Tue, 5 Jan 2010, ND wrote:
> My regexps deals with a HUGE subject strings. A (*MARK) backtracking
> control can significantly speedup this process.
> Why this useful Perl feature is not implemented in PCRE?
Because it isn't straightforward. For a start, there is nowhere to
remember the potentially many *MARK positions, though I suppose it could
be done by recursive function calls. That, I fancy, might slow down
things rather than speed them up.
Secondly, there is no interface to pass back the names on success or
failure (corresponding to the $REGERROR and $REGMARK variables that Perl
uses). I suppose the pcre_extra data block might be extended to handle
this.
> Add this control, please.
I have noted this, but do not expect anything to happen soon. The next
release will be bug fixes only.
