Marcus Denker <marcus at ira.uka.de> wrote:

> I, too, would like to see regular expressions in Squeak... but I think
> if we add them, we need to make sure that it is Ok to aktually use
> them for Squeak itself...
I just checked the plugin size and for RISC OS it is just under 32kb.
So at least from the size-of-vm-code perspective it is not a worrisome
thing.
> 
> As Andrew said: This would make the plugin required even for
> the most basic Squeak install... do we want this? I am no fan of
> "Not invented here", but we need to be sure what the consequences
> are...
> 
> There is one interesting alternative: The SmaCC Scanner-Generator
> contains a complete RegExp implementation. It compiles the regexps
> used in the description of the scanner to Squeak code. It would be 
> interesting
> to see a) how large the overhead is to compile a regexp and b) How fast
> the resulting code is... no idea.
It would surely be worth taking a good look and seeing if this makes a
sensible combination with the RePlugin (or a revised version). If we
can make the plugin be an optional performance booster we win both
ways; it works without the plugin if you have to avoid it and it works
better with the plugin when you have it.

tim
--
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Every bug you find is the last one.