Investigate using regexpp Instead of regexp-to-ast

[bd82]

• https://github.com/mysticatea/regexpp

• Is it more complete (e.g. unicode flag support).
• Performance?
• Runs in the browser / IE ?
• Which versions of node.js are supported?

[bd82]

I am not sure migration would be worth the effort.
It does not seem like maintaining regexp-to-ast requires too much effort.

[bd82]

Now that several new regExp features need to be supported (lookbehind/named capture groups)
It may be worth re-evaluating this.

It could also be evaluated in terms of performance easily as there is a (minimal) cold start benchmark now.

[bd82]

Had another quick look, This seems even more interesting to examine as:

• regexpp is still actively maintained.
• regexpp has no deps
• NodeJS V8.0.0 is supported
• It is 2020, perhaps it is time to ditch IE11 support instead of worrying about compatibility...

[bd82]

Performance of regexpp seems very similar to regexp-to-ast

regexp-to-ast Benchmark
Current version x 10,999 ops/sec ±0.77% (91 runs sampled)
regexpp x 11,116 ops/sec ±0.50% (93 runs sampled)
Fastest is regexpp,Current version

[bd82]

The regexpp does not seem to be well maintained at this time, perhaps the plans for swapping it out should be shelved.

[mattbishop]

Actually it seems pretty active compared to regexp-to-ast. Latest release June 14, 2021 vs Dec 19, 2019.

Also, and crucially, regexpp supports unicode escape sequences and groups. This is a must-have here in 2021!