On Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:01:27 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: > Now, can you write that as a heuristic *algorithm* > def dangerous_re(some_re):?
return re.search(r'\\\d', some_re) is not None That will handle the most extreme case ;) If the OP is serious about analysing regexps, sre_parse.parse() will decompose a regexp to a more convenient form. However, I wouldn't rely upon being able to catch every possible bad case. The only robust solution is to use a separate process (threads won't suffice, as they don't have a .kill() method). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list