match package¶
Submodules¶
Module contents¶
This package allows you to check if a regular expression matches a given string of text, using an algorithm known as Thompson’s construction.
Thompson’s Construction Summary¶
Thompson’s construction is a method of transforming a regular expression into a non-deterministic finite automaton (NFA). Like regular expressions, NFAs are a way of describing sets of character strings, and every valid regular expression will have an equivalent NFA that matches the same set of strings.
Thompson’s algorithm works by building small NFA fragments that represent part of a regular expression, and then composing larger NFAs from those smaller NFA fragments, with a different construction for each operator.
Performance¶
The algorithm offers a significant performance boost over the more complex, real-world regular expression implementations used in programming languages like Perl, Python, and others.