SE-0350: Regex Type and Overview

[Michael_Ilseman]

@Karl

So every component is its own program, compiled separately, in to a separate array of bytecode

No, that's not how it works. Compilation is deferred until the regex is used. At that point the whole tree is compiled into byte code.

@Karl

I think the goal should be that, at least for regex literals (and hopefully for the DSL to some extent), one day we might not even need a bytecode or interpreter. I think the ideal case is if each literal was its own function or type that gets generated and optimised as if you wrote it in Swift.

Static compilation is listed as a future direction and clearly useful for those that can generate simple DFAs. There is a significant code size savings to byte code since the logic inside the interpreter is shared.

@Karl

The model should pretend that's the case and allow for that, even if the implementation isn't there.

How does the proposed approach preclude this?

I'm struggling to see how any of this is relevant. What does encoding the program an additional time in the type signature give us?