REQ: Replace the regex engine

[smudge]

I came to post a request for the keyword regex feature to support mode directives like case insensitive (?i) but when searching the forum for other regex related posts, in this reply by Support Rep Brenda, she mentioned that the regex engine used in SecureCRT is ECMAScript (aka Javascript) but she didn't say which version *1. Looking up the supported feature list shows that mode directives are not available at all in EMCA so there is no reason to bother you with that request

In almost every post I found regarding regex, one common request was to support phrases instead of just keywords. The answer was always that due to performance issues, phrase matching was too slow so it is not available. I, like so many others, would LOVE to have this feature added!

So, my request to your developers is replace the EMCAScript engine with a better/faster regex engine.

A quick search of regex engine speed comparisons shows there are many engines that perform much better than EMCA.
One small benchmark page showed the Intel Hyperscan engine blowing away all the others, with Google's RE2 engine just behind. I'm sure either of these would be a huge improvement over EMCA.

Please have a developer take an afternoon trying out some other engines that has support for more features and better performance.

If you can't find one that works as fast as you are requiring, pick the fastest and then put in a disclaimer in the keyword configuration dialog window like "Using advanced/complicated regex rules may cause performance issues".
I'm sure I'm not the only user that would be willing to live with slightly slower text drawing in exchange for phrase matching and/or directive modes.

Thanks for your consideration.

P.S. For anyone learning RegEx, check out the online regex utility and tutorial, regex101.com. As you enter your regex rule, it breaks it down and describes each step of the engine logic. This is an amazing tool for not only learning regex but to see how well the rule performs. There are many different ways to create a rule and some can be tens if not hundreds of times slower than other rules. If you are stuck with a complicated rule, you can share it with others in the community forum or even live chat with a regex expert! In a situation like in SecureCRT and having multiple regex rules constantly processing the session output, optimization is very important.


*1 : If the EMCA engine code hasn't been updated since the regex feature was added to SecureCRT, that would mean v5.x which is 7+ years old.