So far, these are humble beginnings indeed. Based on the descriptions of
http://swtch.com/%7Ersc/regexp/regexp2.html
I started implementing a Thompson NFA / Pike VM.
The idea being that eventually, regular expressions are to be compiled
into special-purpose bytecode for the Pike VM that executes a varying
number of threads in lock-step over each character of the text to match.
The thread count is bounded by the length of the program: two different
threads with identical instruction pointer at the same character-to-match
would yield exactly the same outcome (and therefore, we can execute just
one such thread instead of possibly many).
To allow for matching groups, each thread carries a state with it, saving
the group offsets acquired so far.
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
