Re: [Emacs-diffs] master 938d252 4/4: Make regex matching reentrant; update syntax during match

[Stefan Monnier]

>     (unfreeze_pattern, freeze_pattern): New functions.
>     (compile_pattern): Return a regexp_cache pointer instead of the
>     re_pattern_buffer, allowing callers to use `freeze_pattern' if
>     needed.  Do not consider busy patterns as cache hit candidates;
>     error if we run out of non-busy cache entries.

IIRC the main/only reason why you can't use a compiled pattern in
a reentrant way is because the \{N,M\} repetitions use a counter that's
stored directly within the compiled pattern.

But these are fairly rare.

So we could easily change the code to add a boolean stating whether there
is such a repetition-counter in the pattern, and if there isn't then
"freeze" can just do nothing because we can freely use that pattern
multiple times at the same time.


        Stefan