Regular Expressions in Python unexpectedly slow

Question

Consider this Python code:

import timeit
import re

def one():
        any(s in mystring for s in (\'foo\', \'bar\', \'hello\'))

r = re.compile(\'(foo|bar|hello         


        

Answer 1

My coworker found the re2 library (https://code.google.com/p/re2/)? There is a python wrapper. It's a bit to get installed on some systems.

I was having the same issue with some complex regexes and long strings -- re2 sped the processing time up significantly -- from seconds to milliseconds.