On Fri, 25 May 2001, Wayne Blair wrote:
> I have been thinking about the java based ruby interpreter project, and I
> remember one of my largest issues with java has been its lack of regular
> expression support.  Over a year ago, when I ran times of basic regexes in
> Perl5 and the best available java regex implementation I could find, the
> java version ran 5 times slower, so I ruled out even using regexes in my
> performance-sensitive java code.  Since writing a reasonably performing
> regex engine in java, if you had to do it from scratch, might be the lion's
> share of the work in creating a java based interpreter, I wonder if anyone
> on this list has tested a java regex engine recently.  If so:
> 
> Did it perform well?

Jython uses the Apache Perl5 ripoff regex engine:
org.apache.oro.text.regex

It seems to be reasonably fast.

> Is it open source and available for a ruby license project?

Yes


> 
> If no such implementation is available for us, does anyone of the many of us
> who would like to participate in a java-based ruby interpreter project feel
> comfortable implementing a compatible regex engine that also performs well?

God, that sounds painful. ;-)

> 
> Anyway, I don't mean to cast clouds on the project, I just think this is one
> of the most important issues to address.

Agreed.

> 
> Wayne