Is there a way to really pickle compiled regular expressions in python?

Question

I have a python console application that contains 300+ regular expressions. The set of regular expressions is fixed for each release. When users run the app, the entire se

Answer 1

OK, this isn't pretty, but it might be what you want. I looked at the sre_compile.py module from Python 2.6, and ripped out a bit of it, chopped it in half, and used the two pieces to pickle and unpickle compiled regexes:

import re, sre_compile, sre_parse, _sre
import cPickle as pickle

# the first half of sre_compile.compile    
def raw_compile(p, flags=0):
    # internal: convert pattern list to internal format

    if sre_compile.isstring(p):
        pattern = p
        p = sre_parse.parse(p, flags)
    else:
        pattern = None

    code = sre_compile._code(p, flags)

    return p, code

# the second half of sre_compile.compile
def build_compiled(pattern, p, flags, code):
    # print code

    # XXX:  get rid of this limitation!
    if p.pattern.groups > 100:
        raise AssertionError(
            "sorry, but this version only supports 100 named groups"
            )

    # map in either direction
    groupindex = p.pattern.groupdict
    indexgroup = [None] * p.pattern.groups
    for k, i in groupindex.items():
        indexgroup[i] = k

    return _sre.compile(
        pattern, flags | p.pattern.flags, code,
        p.pattern.groups-1,
        groupindex, indexgroup
        )

def pickle_regexes(regexes):
    picklable = []
    for r in regexes:
        p, code = raw_compile(r, re.DOTALL)
        picklable.append((r, p, code))
    return pickle.dumps(picklable)

def unpickle_regexes(pkl):
    regexes = []
    for r, p, code in pickle.loads(pkl):
        regexes.append(build_compiled(r, p, re.DOTALL, code))
    return regexes

regexes = [
    r"^$",
    r"a*b+c*d+e*f+",
    ]

pkl = pickle_regexes(regexes)
print pkl
print unpickle_regexes(pkl)

I don't really know if this works, or if it speeds things up. I know it prints a list of regexes when I try it. It might be very specific to version 2.6, I also don't know that.