Re: Performance implications of GRegex structure

[Yevgen Muntyan <muntyan tamu edu>]

Owen Taylor wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-03-17 at 16:08 -0500, Yevgen Muntyan wrote:
>   
> > Yevgen Muntyan wrote:
> >     
> > > [snip]
> > > To me here the only good argument in favor of separate Match objects is 
> > > multi-thread uses.
> > > Simply because we already have Match object, just hidden. If the best 
> > > way to fix GRegex
> > > for multi-threading is a separate match object, then it should be a 
> > > separate match object.
> > >   
> > >       
> > In fact it's not a solution, right? Since if it's separate Match
> > structure, then Regex still needs to keep state.
> > So, the solution is to rename some stuff to make GRegex be
> > a GRegexExp or something, and move the actual functionality
> > to some new GMatcher, i.e. not change anything conceptually but
> > explicitly separate Pattern and Matcher. Did I get it right?
> >     
>
> Yes, I think you've understood what I was talking about with a
> matcher object ... almost all  the methods in GRegex currently other
> than g_regex_new()/g_regex_optimize() are conceptually matcher methods.
>
> I don't have any objection to a matcher object with state; what I don't
>   
> like is binding it together with the pattern into a single indivisible
> object.
>   
What I was arguing to (if you ignore "don't change it period" part)
was creating new match objects every time you perform a match
(it's what's done in Python). Basically I don't want every match()
method to get me new allocated structure which has to be freed.
And given it wouldn't work anyway, I was arguing to something
which wouldn't work anyway :)
Making cool new API which would be nice is certainly not a bad
thing.

One thing should be taken care of: how all those things will
be copied/referenced. The language bindings concern led
to this silly g_regex_copy(); so we can get same funny
thing when someone says "not bindings-friendly" about
new API.
Perhaps making Matcher and Regex ref-countable (perhaps
internally for Regex) wouldn't be bad, would it?

It would be great if concerned people [1] commented  about it in
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=419368

Yevgen

[1] Owen :)