&gt; re2c is probably just as fast in practice, i&#x27;d imagine.<p>Probably, but re2c requires every pattern to be run through a C compiler.  Not useful if you want to use it as the embedded regex engine inside a language interpreter.<p>Also recent iterations of Intel processors contain specialized string-scanning instructions -- I would love to see engines that can take advantage of these.  It would be hard for C compilers to recognize these patterns, I think, without explicit use of intrinsics: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.reverberate.org&#x2F;2009&#x2F;07&#x2F;gazelle-is-going-to-love-sse-42.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.reverberate.org&#x2F;2009&#x2F;07&#x2F;gazelle-is-going-to-love...</a>