TO-UNDO: makefile target for Regex
Refactor Pattern / Matcher classes

This makes both the Pattern and the Matcher class abstract so that more
specialized patterns than the trivial patterns we support so far can be
implemented as convenient subclasses of the respective abstract base
classes.

To ease development, we work on copies in test/regex/ in the 'regex'
package. That way, it can be developed in Eclipse (because it does not
interfere with Oracle JRE's java.util.regex.* classes).

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Start implementing a regular expression engine

So far, these are humble beginnings indeed. Based on the descriptions of

	http://swtch.com/%7Ersc/regexp/regexp2.html

I started implementing a Thompson NFA / Pike VM.

The idea being that eventually, regular expressions are to be compiled
into special-purpose bytecode for the Pike VM that executes a varying
number of threads in lock-step over each character of the text to match.

The thread count is bounded by the length of the program: two different
threads with identical instruction pointer at the same character-to-match
would yield exactly the same outcome (and therefore, we can execute just
one such thread instead of possibly many).

To allow for matching groups, each thread carries a state with it, saving
the group offsets acquired so far.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Implement Pattern / Matcher classes based on the PikeVM

Based on the just-implemented PikeVM, let's test it with a specific
regular expression. At this point, no parsing is implemented but instead
an explicit program executing a(bb)?a is hardcoded.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Prepare the Matcher class for multiple groups

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Add a unit test for the regular expression engine

We still do not parse the regular expressions, but we can at least test
that the hardcoded 'a(bb)+a' works as expected.

This class will be extended as we support more and more features.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: optimize matching characters

Instead of having an opcode 'CHAR', let's have the opcodes that fall
within the range of a char *be* the opcode 'match this character'.

While at it, break the ranges of the different types of opcodes apart a
litte and describe them, too.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: support prioritized threads

If we want to match greedy or reluctant regular expressions, we have
to make sure that certain threads are split off with a higher priority
than others. We will use the ThreadQueues' natural order as priority
order: high to low.

To support splitting into different-priority threads, let's introduce
a second SPLIT opcode: SPLIT_JMP. The latter prefers to jump while the
former prefers to execute the opcode directly after the SPLIT opcode.

There is a subtle challenge here, though: let's assume that there are
two current threads and the higher-priority one wants to jump where
the lower-priority one is already. In the PikeVM implementation
before this change, queueImmediately() would see that there is
already a thread queued for that program counter and *not* queue the
higher-priority one.

Example: when matching the pattern '(a?)(a??)(a?)' against the string
'aa', after the first character, the first (high priority) thread
will have matched the first group while the second thread matched the
second group. In the following step, therefore, the first thread will
want to SPLIT_JMP to match the final 'a' to the third group but the
second thread already queued that program counter.

The proposed solution is to introduce a third thread queue: 'queued'.
When queuing threads to be executed after reading the next character
from the string to match, they are not directly queued into 'next' but
into 'queued'. Every thread requiring immediate execution (i.e. before
reading the next character) will be queued into 'current'. Whenever
'current' is drained, the next thread from 'queued' that has not been
queued to 'current' yet will be executed.

That way, we can guarantee that 1) no lower-priority thread can override
a higher-priority thread and 2) infinite loop are prevented.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: special-case a(a*?)(a?)(a??)(a+)(a*)a

Among other challenges, this regular expression is designed to demonstrate
that thread prioritization is finicky: Given the string 'aaaaaa' to match,
the first four threads will try to grab the second 'a', the third thread
(the one that matched the '(a??)' group) having scheduled the same
instruction pointer to the '(a+)' group that the second -- higher-priority
-- thread will try to advance to only after processing the '(a??)' group's
SPLIT. The second thread must override the third thread in that case,
essentially stopping the latter.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: test group matching

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: add a class for matching character classes

This will be used to match character classes (such as '[0-9a-f]'),
but it will also be used by the regular expression pattern compiler
to determine whether a character has special meaning in regular
expressions.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: Implement compiler for regular expression patterns

Originally, this developer wanted to (ab)use the PikeVM with a
hand-crafted program and an added "callback" opcode to parse the regular
expressions.

However, this turned out to be completely unnecessary: there are no
ambiguities in regular expression patterns, so there is no need to do
anything else than parse the pattern, one character at a time, into a
nested expression that then knows how to write itself into a program for
the PikeVM.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: support the dot

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: implement * and + operators

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: Implement reluctant '?', '*' and '+'

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
WIP: Regex: implement find()

Now that we have non-greedy repeats, we can implement the find() (which
essentially prefixes the regular expression pattern with '.*?'.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: add support for character classes

Now we support regular expression patterns a la '[0-9]'.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: implement non-capturing groups

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: implement alternatives

Now we support regular expressions like 'A|B|C'.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Regex: support lookaheads

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>