Re: [PATCH] add compiled regexp primitive lisp object

[Danny McClanahan <dmcc2@hypnicjerk.ai>]

Hello! The talk video and slides are up at https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/regex/.

- The slides have much more content than the video itself.
  - I have a 50 minute talk video which I will be editing and subtitling and posting in a bit.
- I received feedback that the filtering I applied over my camera stream is incredibly distracting so please feel free to cover up that part. Sorry! :(

One thing I note in a footnote is that the precompiled regexp doesn't work for fontification yet, and I think it's because there's buffer-local state not available when the regexp is compiled. NullNix on EmacsConf IRC had a *fantastic* suggestion I hadn't considered at all: make the compile cache buffer-local (or mode-local)!

Especially since I advocate for the approach Pip Cet suggests (doing a new regexp engine in lisp itself) instead of trying to extend the C engine with new features, I think making the cache more specific is probably much more likely to succeed for things like fontification than circumventing the cache approach entirely. This seems like a much more appropriate way to extend the C engine for immediate goals, while we can do a lisp engine for the stuff we can't do with regex-emacs!

I will try posting a patch with that approach in the next few days (likely without any of the changes from this patch). I think if fontification still doesn't work with this (perhaps if the syntax table or case table is modified), that would still be interesting and I'll delve into that more deeply.

Thanks,
Danny

On Tuesday, November 26th, 2024 at 13:05, Danny McClanahan <dmcc2@hypnicjerk.ai> wrote:

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> Thanks so much for this thorough and thoughtful response! I am compiling a 20-minute recorded talk for the upcoming EmacsConf regarding these discussions and investigations. I am also now waiting for a response from graduate school, during which I hope to then have more time to pin down several of the threads raised by this discussion.
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> This has all been immensely helpful and I really appreciate how responsive emacs-devel has been in elaborating much of the packed-together assumptions I was making.