The following code "hangs" the interpreter:

    import re
    re.search(r"/\*\*((?:[^*]+|\*[^/])*)\*/", """	/** Copy Constructor **/
	private EvaluationContext (EvaluationContext base) {""")



Changing the regex to r"/\*\*((?:[^*]|\*[^/])*)\*/" makes it work normally.

This is the usual exponential backtracking behaviour of Python's regex engine. The problem is that the regex

    (?:[^*]+|\*[^/])*

can match against a string in exponentially many ways, and Python's regex engine tries all of them before giving up.

Right.  We don't try to fix handling these kinds of exponential expressions.  This is a case of "don't do that" :)

(I don't know if the regex module is better at "handling" this kind of regex bug.)

The regex module is much better in this respect, but it's not foolproof. With this particular example it completes quickly.