Re: Making regex replace CTFE by removing malloc

[Pierre Krafft via Digitalmars-d]

I got some help from the IRC, poked the code a bit and have some 
details I can share. The code uses a reference counted memory 
pool, that's the part I linked. It's possible to avoid the malloc 
but that's not the hard part. For me it looks like memory pools 
aren't compatible with CTFE. This is because CTFE disallows most 
pointer casts.
Allocations and frees have fortunately been moved to common 
functions so it should be possible to change the allocation code 
without too much hassle. I would prefer to have the same code for 
runtime and CTFE, but for performance reasons that might not be 
possible if CTFE has a too limited feature set.
I think a good idea would be to extract the memory pool code out 
of the regex module. It's not a core part of the problem and 
could be reused elsewhere. Having something named memory pool 
would also make the code clearer. It might be impossible to 
implement memory pools at CTFE so  we could hide that detail away 
by simulating a memory pool (at CTFE) until it becomes possible.
The code in general is quite clear, but low level and more about 
how to do it than what to do. This is not the D-style I know and 
love, but it might be needed for performance. Therefore I 
probably won't be the one that starts the implementation of this, 
but I will try to help if someone more experienced in this kind 
of code takes action.