pyre2 is a Python extension that wraps Google's RE2 regular expression library. It implements many of the features of Python's built-in re module with compatible interfaces.

• Regexp objects have a fullmatch method that works like match, but anchors the match at both the start and the end.
• Regexp objects have test_search, test_match, and test_fullmatch methods that work like search, match, and fullmatch, but only return True or False to indicate whether the match was successful. These methods should be faster than the full versions, especially for patterns with capturing groups.

• No substitution methods.
• No flags.
• No split, findall, or finditer.
• No top-level convenience functions like search and match. (Just use compile.)
• No compile cache. (If you care enough about performance to use RE2, you probably care enough to cache your own patterns.)
• No lastindex or lastgroup on Match objects.

pyre2 has only received basic testing, and I am by no means a Python extension expert, so it is quite possible that it contains bugs. I'd guess the most likely are reference leaks in error cases.

RE2 doesn't build with fPIC, so I had to build it with

make CFLAGS='-fPIC -c -Wall -Wno-sign-compare -O3 -g -I.'

I also had to add it to my compiler search path when building the module with a command like

env CPPFLAGS='-I/path/to/re2' LDFLAGS='-L/path/to/re2/obj' ./setup.py build

You can file bug reports on GitHub, or email the author: David Reiss <[email protected]>.