[spectraldrift]

Having never heard of mojo before, I found this article fascinating. It provides a great example of how a toy regex parser works and an excellent explanation of why vanilla regex tends to be slow. It also presents a novel solution: compiling the regex into regular code, which can then be optimized by the compiler.

[convolvatron]

this is literally how 'lex' works. the one written in 1987 by Vern Paxson.

[jlokier]

The original is 'lex', written in 1975 by Mike Lesk and Eric Schmidt.

Yes, that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.

1987 was the clone, 'flex' :-)

It did "compiling the regex into regular code, which can then be optimized by the compiler" before the C programming language as we know it was created. I think 'lex' was compiling regex to C before the C language even had 'struct' types, 'printf' or 'malloc'.

[spectraldrift]

So I'm only 40 years behind! It's amazing how early innovations like this seamlessly fade into the background and can be taken for granted by folks like myself.