pyre2 is a Python extension that wraps Google's RE2 regular expression library. The RE2 engine compiles (strictly) regular expressions to deterministic finite automata, which guarantees linear-time behavior.
Intended as a drop-in replacement for re
. Unicode is supported by encoding to UTF-8, and bytes strings are treated as UTF-8 when the UNICODE flag is given. For best performance, work with UTF-8 encoded bytes strings.
The stated goal of this module is to be a drop-in replacement for re
, i.e.:
try:
import re2 as re
except ImportError:
import re
That being said, there are features of the re
module that this module may never have; these will be handled through fallback to the original re
module: - lookahead assertions
(?!...)- backreferences (
\nin search pattern) - \W and \S not supported inside character classes On the other hand, unicode character classes are supported (e.g.,
p{Greek}). Syntax reference: https://github.com/google/re2/wiki/Syntax However, there are times when you may want to be notified of a failover. The function
set_fallback_notificationdetermines the behavior in these cases:: try: import re2 as re except ImportError: import re else: re.set_fallback_notification(re.FALLBACK_WARNING)
set_fallback_notificationtakes three values:
re.FALLBACK_QUIETLY(default),
re.FALLBACK_WARNING(raise a warning), and
re.FALLBACK_EXCEPTION(raise an exception). Installation ============ Prerequisites: * The `re2 library from Google <https://github.com/google/re2>`_ * The Python development headers (e.g.
sudo apt-get install python-dev) * A build environment with
gccor
clang(e.g.
sudo apt-get install build-essential) * Cython 0.20+ (
pip install cython) After the prerequisites are installed, install as follows (
pip3for python3):: $ pip install https://github.com/andreasvc/pyre2/archive/master.zip For development, get the source:: $ git clone git://github.com/andreasvc/pyre2.git $ cd pyre2 $ make install (or
make install3for Python 3) Documentation ============= Consult the docstring in the source code or interactively through ipython or
pydoc re2etc. Unicode Support =============== Python
bytesand
unicodestrings are fully supported, but note that
RE2works with UTF-8 encoded strings under the hood, which means that
unicodestrings need to be encoded and decoded back and forth. There are two important factors: * whether a
unicodepattern and search string is used (will be encoded to UTF-8 internally) * the
UNICODEflag: whether operators such as
wrecognize Unicode characters. To avoid the overhead of encoding and decoding to UTF-8, it is possible to pass UTF-8 encoded bytes strings directly but still treat them as
unicode:: In [18]: re2.findall(u'\w'.encode('utf8'), u'Mötley Crüe'.encode('utf8'), flags=re2.UNICODE) Out[18]: ['M', '\xc3\xb6', 't', 'l', 'e', 'y', 'C', 'r', '\xc3\xbc', 'e'] In [19]: re2.findall(u'\w'.encode('utf8'), u'Mötley Crüe'.encode('utf8')) Out[19]: ['M', 't', 'l', 'e', 'y', 'C', 'r', 'e'] However, note that the indices in
Matchobjects will refer to the bytes string. The indices of the match in the
unicodestring could be computed by decoding/encoding, but this is done automatically and more efficiently if you pass the
unicodestring:: >>> re2.search(u'ü'.encode('utf8'), u'Mötley Crüe'.encode('utf8'), flags=re2.UNICODE) <re2.Match object; span=(10, 12), match='\xc3\xbc'> >>> re2.search(u'ü', u'Mötley Crüe', flags=re2.UNICODE) <re2.Match object; span=(9, 10), match=u'\xfc'> Finally, if you want to match bytes without regard for Unicode characters, pass bytes strings and leave out the
UNICODEflag (this will cause Latin 1 encoding to be used with
RE2under the hood):: >>> re2.findall(br'.', b'\x80\x81\x82') ['\x80', '\x81', '\x82'] Performance =========== Performance is of course the point of this module, so it better perform well. Regular expressions vary widely in complexity, and the salient feature of
RE2is that it behaves well asymptotically. This being said, for very simple substitutions, I've found that occasionally python's regular
remodule is actually slightly faster. However, when the
remodule gets slow, it gets *really* slow, while this module buzzes along. In the below example, I'm running the data against 8MB of text from the colossal Wikipedia XML file. I'm running them multiple times, being careful to use the
timeitmodule. To see more details, please see the `performance script <http://github.com/axiak/pyre2/tree/master/tests/performance.py>`_. +-----------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+------------+--------------+---------------+-------------+-----------------+----------------+ |Test |Description |# total runs|
retime(s)|
re2time(s)|%
retime|
regextime(s)|%
regextime| +=================+===========================================================================+============+==============+===============+=============+=================+================+ |Findall URI|Email|Find list of '([a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]*)://([^ /]+)(/[^ ]*)?|([^ @]+)@([^ @]+)'|2 |6.262 |0.131 |2.08% |5.119 |2.55% | +-----------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+------------+--------------+---------------+-------------+-----------------+----------------+ |Replace WikiLinks|This test replaces links of the form [[Obama|Barack_Obama]] to Obama. |100 |4.374 |0.815 |18.63% |1.176 |69.33% | +-----------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+------------+--------------+---------------+-------------+-----------------+----------------+ |Remove WikiLinks |This test splits the data by the <page> tag. |100 |4.153 |0.225 |5.43% |0.537 |42.01% | +-----------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+------------+--------------+---------------+-------------+-----------------+----------------+ Feel free to add more speed tests to the bottom of the script and send a pull request my way! Current Status ============== The tests show the following differences with Python's
remodule: * The
$operator in Python's
rematches twice if the string ends with
n. This can be simulated using
n?$, except when doing substitutions. *
pyre2and Python's
rebehave differently with nested and empty groups;
pyre2will return an empty string in cases where Python would return None for a group that did not participate in a match. Please report any further issues with
pyre2. Tests ===== If you would like to help, one thing that would be very useful is writing comprehensive tests for this. It's actually really easy: * Come up with regular expression problems using the regular python 're' module. * Write a session in python traceback format `Example <http://github.com/axiak/pyre2/blob/master/tests/search.txt>`_. * Replace your
import rewith
import re2 as re``. * Save it as a .txt file in the tests directory. You can comment on it however you like and indent the code with 4 spaces.
This code builds on the following projects (in chronological order):
- Google's RE2 regular expression library: https://github.com/google/re2
- Facebook's pyre2 github repository: http://github.com/facebook/pyre2/
- Mike Axiak's Cython version of this: http://github.com/axiak/pyre2/ (seems not actively maintained)
- This fork adds Python 3 support and other improvements.