Regular expression matching
Balsa
uses regular expressions in various places, such as for "linkifying" URL
s in text message parts. Originally implemented using POSIX
methods, they were ported to GRegex
some time ago. The future of GRegex
is now in question, and deprecation in the near future seems likely.
Users of GRegex
would be advised to port to PCRE2
, which then becomes an additional dependency; it is, however, widely used and would be installed in any modern repo.
In preparation, a new branch port-to-pcre2 has been created. It has largely drop-in replacements for the GRegex
functions used by Balsa
, based on the PCRE2
API, using new types LibBalsaRegex
and LibBalsaMatchData
.
Feedback welcome!