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Thu Nov 24 15:52:01 CET 2005 · https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-November/058317.html

On Thu, 2005-11-24 at 14:11 +0000, Duncan Grisby wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I posted this to comp.lang.python, but got no response, so I thought I
> would consult the wise people here...
> 
> I have encountered a problem with the re module. I have a
> multi-threaded program that does lots of regular expression searching,
> with some relatively complex regular expressions. Occasionally, events
> can conspire to mean that the re search takes minutes. That's bad
> enough in and of itself, but the real problem is that the re engine
> does not release the interpreter lock while it is running. All the
> other threads are therefore blocked for the entire time it takes to do
> the regular expression search.

I don't know if this will help, but in my experience compiling re's
often takes longer than matching them... are you sure that it's the
match and not a compile that is taking a long time? Are you using
pre-compiled re's or are you dynamically generating strings and using
them?

> Is there any fundamental reason why the re module cannot release the
> interpreter lock, for at least some of the time it is running?  The
> ideal situation for me would be if it could do most of its work with
> the lock released, since the software is running on a multi processor
> machine that could productively do other work while the re is being
> processed. Failing that, could it at least periodically release the
> lock to give other threads a chance to run?
> 
> A quick look at the code in _sre.c suggests that for most of the time,
> no Python objects are being manipulated, so the interpreter lock could
> be released. Has anyone tried to do that?

probably not... not many people would have several-minutes-to-match
re's.

I suspect it would be do-able... I suggest you put together a patch and
submit it on SF...

-- 
Donovan Baarda <abo at minkirri.apana.org.au>
http://minkirri.apana.org.au/~abo/

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