Compile time regular expression in C++

I&#x27;d love for someone to add this to rebar[1] so that we can get a good sense of how well it does against other general purpose regex engines. It will be a little tricky to add (since the build step will require emitting a C++ program and compiling it), but it should be possible.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;BurntSushi&#x2F;rebar">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;BurntSushi&#x2F;rebar</a>

It&#x27;s a good library but be careful as it can significantly increase compile times. I added a couple of reasonably long regular expressions to a c++ source file and it increased the compile time from near instant (below to 1 second) to 30 seconds. Might be wise to move these to dedicated source files so you don&#x27;t pay this penalty each time you make changes.

Boost Xpressive has had static&#x2F;&quot;compile time&quot; regex in C++ since the mid 2000s<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.boost.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;libs&#x2F;1_83_0&#x2F;doc&#x2F;html&#x2F;xpressive.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.boost.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;libs&#x2F;1_83_0&#x2F;doc&#x2F;html&#x2F;xpressive.htm...</a><p>A performance comparison would be interesting.

D has ctRegex since a decade ago <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dlang.org&#x2F;phobos&#x2F;std_regex.html#ctRegex" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dlang.org&#x2F;phobos&#x2F;std_regex.html#ctRegex</a>

At the risk of sounding like an idiot, what is the benefit of being able to match at compile time?

C++ finally catches up to Perl :-)

Since people is posting other lang implementations... someone did it for zig too (probably less polished than this C++ lib) [0]. It is nice that the regexes can be used at compile time too [1].<p>--<p>0: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;alexnask&#x2F;ctregex.zig">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;alexnask&#x2F;ctregex.zig</a><p>1: I think the difference between C++ template language and Zig comptime is that Zig&#x27;s comptime is almost equal as Zig&#x27;s regular language, whereas the experience of programming C++ templates almost feels like learning a separate, equally complex language.

This has been available in Lisp since at least 2004.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;edicl&#x2F;cl-ppcre&#x2F;">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;edicl&#x2F;cl-ppcre&#x2F;</a>

This has been a part of the dlang standard library for some time: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dlang.org&#x2F;phobos&#x2F;std_regex.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dlang.org&#x2F;phobos&#x2F;std_regex.html</a>

Hopefully the standard regex will be constexpr soon.