Search Project for Regular Expression Hangs

[gsexton]

I tried running a Search, using Regular expressions on Linux using 22.0.0.9 with Hotfix 9 installed. My Search expression is:

\o:b*System\.out\(

The options were to search all files in the project.

When I execute the search, the SlickEdit UI hangs. Running top shows sgrep running 300% (3 cores). I let it run for 2 minutes before cancelling. The project has 38 PHP files in it.

The 0 or more (*) seems to be the trigger for a lockup.

If I turn on foreground search, the slickedit hangs.

[jporkkahtc]

This is easy to repro, even searching a single buffer.

[Lee]

The \o:b has a builtin one or more qualifier (+), and the * adds another zero or more qualifier on top of that expression.  It does eventually finish, but the current regular expression engine is evaluating this in exponential time complexity.  I am filing a defect for this because it could definitely use some improvement. Preferably, you should just use [ \t]* for zero or more spaces, which is less complex expression.

[gsexton]

I guess that's the hazard of having your own regular expression dialect. Nobody understands it but you...

A routine thing that I do is search for:

DEBUG.*=\s*true;

In Slickedit, the \o:b won't work UNLESS there's a space. Plus when I select white space using the insertion dialog, how am I to know this subtlety? It really goes against the philosophy (that I understand) regular expressions by. I specify the character class, and how many times it shows up. I'll really have to train myself to specify my own character class [ \t]* to get the results I need. Having \o:b include an occurrence qualifier was just a bad idea.

I tested the expression in SE 2016, and it works as expected.

[Lee]

\o is a custom extension for the Perl compatible regex engine in SlickEdit.  In the help guide, it is documented that \o:b literally translates to (?:[ \t]+), one or more whitespace characters. I am filing a bug report to investigate it, as there is a performance difference in the two versions on how (?:[ \t]+)* works.

[Clark]

:b was a very bad idea. Too late to fix it now. I'd recommend NEVER using it.