ludic/docs/language/regex/regex-exec.md
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feat(stdlib): add Regex.* — a linear-time regular-expression engine (#18)
A regular-expression library with PCRE/PECL-compatible syntax, implemented as a
Thompson NFA / Pike VM so a bad pattern from a modder can NEVER cause
catastrophic backtracking — matching is O(n·m), never exponential. `(a+)+$` on
40 non-matching chars, `(a*)*b`, `(.*a){20}b` all run in microseconds; a 50 KB
input scans in ~7 ms.

The engine (runtime/native/regex.ludic + regex_vm.ludic, ~700 lines of Ludic, no
C) parses a pattern to a small bytecode program — an unanchored lazy `.*?` prefix
makes a plain search match anywhere — and the VM runs every alive thread in
lockstep per input byte, deduped by program counter and carrying capture slots
(save/restore, leftmost-greedy priority). Supported: literals, `.`, classes
`[...]` (ranges, negation, `\d \w \s` and their negations), anchors `^ $`,
alternation `|`, capturing and `(?:…)` groups, and `* + ? {n} {n,} {n,m}` in
greedy or lazy form, plus the common escapes; numbered capture groups. Errors are
values — an invalid pattern compiles to null, never a crash. Backreferences and
look-around are out of scope for a linear engine, and on the degenerate case of a
nullable subpattern under an unbounded quantifier positions may differ from a
backtracking engine (the price of the linear-time guarantee) — documented.

Surface (Regex.*, aliased in emit_call.ludic to the regex_* functions):
compile / valid / matches / test / find / exec / next / replace / group /
group_count / start / end / ok.

The runtime is spliced on demand: the parser sets a flag when it sees `Regex.`
and maybe_splice_runtime imports the engine — so it costs nothing in a program
that doesn't use it and works in a plain tool (not just an ECS game).

Verified against Python's `re` as an oracle: a 20k-case grammar fuzzer agrees
100% on realistic patterns (0 / 15000 with capture groups) and 99.8% on group-0
spans across the full pathological grammar, the residual being the documented
nullable-quantifier case. examples/library/regex.ludic asserts the behaviour
(wired into `x test`, now 60 passed); docs: a Regex section + 13 per-symbol
pages, inventory + coverage green. Seed reseeded; the C-free bootstrap fixpoint
holds.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-31 12:23:19 +03:00

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Markdown

---
id: regex-exec
name: Regex.exec
category: regex
kind: namespace-method
tokens: Regex.exec
sig: Regex.exec(text, re) -> Match
tip: Like find, but with an already-compiled Regex.
order: 6
ns: Regex
member: exec
---
The compiled-pattern form of <a href="regex-find"><code>Regex.find</code></a>: returns the first <code>Match</code> of the pre-compiled <code>re</code> in <code>text</code>, or <code>null</code>.
Parameters:
- `text` — the string to search
- `re` — a compiled `Regex`
```ludic
program Demo {
entry {
let re = Regex.compile("#(\\w+)")
let m = Regex.exec("a #tag b", re)
print(Regex.group(m, 1))
}
}
```