Syntax
A fast, safe, thread-friendly regular expression library with linear-time matching guarantees, designed for production use.
What is Syntax?
RE2 is an efficient, principled regular expression library developed at Google and used in production since 2006. It provides a safe alternative to backtracking engines by guaranteeing linear-time matching and limiting memory usage, making it suitable for handling expressions from untrusted users.
Developers building systems that need to safely process regular expressions from untrusted sources, such as web services, security tools, or production applications where predictable performance and memory safety are critical.
Developers choose RE2 over alternatives because it prioritizes safety and predictable performance, guaranteeing linear-time matching and configurable memory limits to avoid exponential backtracking and stack overflow, unlike engines that support backtracking-dependent features like backreferences.
Overview
RE2 is a fast, safe, thread-friendly alternative to backtracking regular expression engines like those used in PCRE, Perl, and Python. It is a C++ library.
Use Cases
Best For
- Safely processing regular expressions from untrusted user input in web applications or APIs.
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