Re: modern regexes in emacs

[Stefan Monnier]

>> It should be possible if we introduce new functions for PCRE, or if
>> we mark PCRE regexps in some special way, like put a special text
>> property on the string.

A simpler option is for Elisp users to write (pcre "foo") where `pcre`
is a function that converts to Emacs's own format.

I think it would make a lot of sense for Emacs's search functions to
accept other kinds of search specifications than regular expressions
represented as strings, e.g. to also accept precompiled regexps (or
NFAs/DFAs), so `pcre` could also return one of those representations
if/when support for it is added.


        Stefan