Subj : Re: SpiderMonkey RegExp rewrite has landed
To   : netscape.public.mozilla.jseng
From : thomas@snailshell.de (Thomas Much)
Date : Thu Oct 23 2003 07:21 pm

Phil Schwartau <PhilSchwartau@aol.com> wrote:

> A new landing has gone in, rewriting the regular expression engine
> in SpiderMonkey.

Speaking of... If I create a regular expression, say

  re = /abc/

and replace its content with

  re.compile("")

I get the empty regexp. Now, if I call

  s = re.toString()

I get "//" as the result in most browsers (Mozilla, IE, Opera, iCab) -
which is fine for display. But if I call Mozilla's toSource(), I get the
same, although it is no valid source code for a regular expression.
Shouldn't we better return "/(?:)/" (as mentioned in ECMA262 7.8.5) for
this special case?


And BTW: Is

  /a/("abc")         // Mozilla's extension to ECMA262

the same as

  /a/.exec("abc")  // ECMA262 standard

?

bye, Thomas

.