nltk/nltk — pull request #488 by deanmalmgren (2013-09-18 18:43:41+00:00)
Title: somebody forgot the commas...

Sorry...I forgot the commas and didn't test this before issuing PR #487. Total rookie mistake.

So, I thought I'd do a little speed testing and I was surprised that this wasn't too much faster. In fact, it was almost exactly the same speed.

After a bit more reading (ironically enough in the same SO answer...my bad!), it looks like [python actually caches the regexps](http://stackoverflow.com/a/452143/564709), which explains why this isn't so much faster. Apparently pre-compiling is a misnomer?

If you're inclined to backout the changes in favor of readability, I'd totally understand. Otherwise, this should fix the current push so it actually works.