In the re-Module which come with Python version 2.0
(Nov 28 11:10 re.py) the created MatchObjects cannot be
copied with a deepcopy(). Switching back to the old
"pre.py" as proposed in "re.py" makes everything work
ok.

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A patch for that problem is in
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=419070&group_id=5470&atid=305470

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I'm not sure this is a bug -- imo, you're relying on
an implementation artifact in the original PCRE port.
And making this work under SRE isn't as easy as it may
appear (the proposed patch may work in your specific
case, but it isn't a general solution).

But before I make up my mind here, maybe you could tell
me why you think it's a good idea to use deepcopy on
match objects.  Why not just store "m.groups()" or
"m.regs" instead?

Cheers /F

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You are right, m.groupdict() and m.groups() are surely the
better choice.

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On the other hand, it looks like we've found a rather
elegant way to solve this.  I'll leave this one open
(as a feature request).

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The patch by Martin referenced below was closed since, as Fredrik pointed 
out in the patch, that re objects have __copy__ and __deepcopy__ methods.  
Problem is that they are untested so they are basically no-ops after 
compilation by raising exceptions.  So if this feature is still desired someone 
just needs to work the kinks out of what Fredrik has started.

A related issue419070 was closed with no resolution (or resolution did 
not survive the trip from SF), but it looks like the patch was rejected.

Some work towards this issue was done in r21437, but 7 years later it is 
still marked as work in progress.  Is there still interest is this 
feature?

On Mon, 17 Mar 2008, Alexander Belopolsky wrote:

> Alexander Belopolsky <belopolsky@users.sourceforge.net> added the comment:
>
> A related issue419070 was closed with no resolution (or resolution did
> not survive the trip from SF), but it looks like the patch was rejected.
>
> Some work towards this issue was done in r21437, but 7 years later it is
> still marked as work in progress.  Is there still interest is this
> feature?

Not by me since I moved to Haskell. :-)

One reason why this issue has been having less impact is that a bug in 
some versions of the copy.py code meant it was ignoring the 
__deepcopy__ stubs and using the pickle logic to copy _sre objects - 
so, if you run the right python version, compiled regular expressions 
and match objects deepcopy without problems.

On the 2.4 branch (release24-maint), changeset 38430 introduced the bug 
that prevents the class __deepcopy__ exception-raising stubs being 
found.

As an aside, I don't understand why the _sre objects should be 
pickleable, but not deepcopy-able.

As far as I can tell, there is no proposed patch. So this is out of
scope for 2.5.3.

The OP has no interest in this, there is no patch, and re2 is coming. Should we close this?

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