348642 - Implement JS_*RegExp API

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: JavaScript Engine, defect)

Description

[Alex Vincent [:WeirdAl]]

Spun off of bug 106590.  We need a complete public JS API for ECMAScript regular expressions.

Use case:  Bug 345512 needs ECMA-262 regexp's for its pattern attribute.

Comment 1

[Alex Vincent [:WeirdAl]]

requesting blocking1.9:  this is a missing part of the public API for JavaScript Engine, and blocks two features of the Web Forms 2.0 implementation, among other things.

Comment 2

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

Brendan, any thoughts on how easy/hard this might be?

Comment 3

[Brian Crowder]

Shawn:  It's pretty easy, it just keeps falling to the bottom of my list.  If you want it, please take it.  I'll help wherever I can.

-- crowder

Comment 4

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Shawn:  It's pretty easy, it just keeps falling to the bottom of my list.  If
> you want it, please take it.  I'll help wherever I can.
Sadly, I don't have the cycles.  We are just looking this for better unicode support for mozStorage.

Comment 5

[AndrewM]

Should the Target Milestone be changed; we are almost at alpha 9...

Comment 6

[Brian Crowder]

If bug 345512 blocks 1.9, then this should too, of course.  Until then, it should not.

Comment 7

[Brian Crowder]

The problem right now is that jsregexp.c is tightly (whether for good or ill) coupled to the rest of the JSAPI machinery; it needs and uses a JSContext, and takes as input and yields as output JS things.  Given that coupling, I don't think there's a huge difference between having a lower-level C API for this, and you simply implementing your requirements using JS_(Compile|Evaluate)Script() calls.  Also, I think this bug isn't worth fixing in the 1.9 timeframe; with Tamarin on the horizon, we'll have something PCRE-like to use, then, for more direct C/C++ love.

I'd suggest WONTFIXing this and removing the dependency for 345512.  I'll walk you through integrating the APIs you need for that there, if you like.

Comment 8

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

crowder - is comment 7 still valid in the new world of tracing?  This wold come in handy (or a C api) for bug 391750 as well.

Comment 9

[Brian Crowder]

No, no PCRE for us, seemingly....  but you can still use the regular JS API to get ECMA regexp behavior as I suggested.

Comment 10

[Alex Vincent [:WeirdAl]]

per comment 7, and also per developments in bug 345624.

Comment 11

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Except the tamarin plan has changed right? So the PCRE-like thing is unlikely to appear.