The stack is the memory set aside as scratch space for a thread of execution. When a function is called, a block is reserved on the top of the stack for local variables and some bookkeeping data. When that function returns, the block becomes unused and can be used the next time a function is called. The stack is always reserved in a LIFO (last in first out) order; the most recently reserved block is always the next block to be freed. This makes it really simple to keep track of the stack; freeing a block from the stack is nothing more than adjusting one pointer.
The heap is memory set aside for dynamic allocation. Unlike the stack, there's no enforced pattern to the allocation and deallocation of blocks from the heap; you can allocate a block at any time and free it at any time. This makes it much more complex to keep track of which parts of the heap are allocated or freed at any given time; there are many custom heap allocators available to tune heap performance for different usage patterns.
Each thread gets a stack, while there's typically only one heap for the application (although it isn't uncommon to have multiple heaps for different types of allocation).
To answer your questions directly:
To what extent are they controlled by the OS or language runtime?
The OS allocates the stack for each system-level thread when the thread is created. Typically the OS is called by the language runtime to allocate the heap for the application.
What is their scope?
The stack is attached to a thread, so when the thread exits the stack is reclaimed. The heap is typically allocated at application startup by the runtime, and is reclaimed when the application (technically process) exits.
What determines the size of each of them?
The size of the stack is set when a thread is created. The size of the heap is set on application startup, but can grow as space is needed (the allocator requests more memory from the operating system).
What makes one faster?
The stack is faster because the access pattern makes it trivial to allocate and deallocate memory from it (a pointer/integer is simply incremented or decremented), while the heap has much more complex bookkeeping involved in an allocation or deallocation. Also, each byte in the stack tends to be reused very frequently which means it tends to be mapped to the processor's cache, making it very fast. Another performance hit for the heap is that the heap, being mostly a global resource, typically has to be multi-threading safe, i.e. each allocation and deallocation needs to be - typically - synchronized with "all" other heap accesses in the program.
A clear demonstration:
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/
^ # start of string
( # first group start
(?:
(?:[^?+*{}()[\]\\|]+ # literals and ^, $
| \\. # escaped characters
| \[ (?: \^?\\. | \^[^\\] | [^\\^] ) # character classes
(?: [^\]\\]+ | \\. )* \]
| \( (?:\?[:=!]|\?<[=!]|\?>)? (?1)?? \) # parenthesis, with recursive content
| \(\? (?:R|[+-]?\d+) \) # recursive matching
)
(?: (?:[?+*]|\{\d+(?:,\d*)?\}) [?+]? )? # quantifiers
| \| # alternative
)* # repeat content
) # end first group
$ # end of string
/
This is a recursive regex, and is not supported by many regex engines. PCRE based ones should support it.
Without whitespace and comments:
/^((?:(?:[^?+*{}()[\]\\|]+|\\.|\[(?:\^?\\.|\^[^\\]|[^\\^])(?:[^\]\\]+|\\.)*\]|\((?:\?[:=!]|\?<[=!]|\?>)?(?1)??\)|\(\?(?:R|[+-]?\d+)\))(?:(?:[?+*]|\{\d+(?:,\d*)?\})[?+]?)?|\|)*)$/
.NET does not support recursion directly. (The (?1)
and (?R)
constructs.) The recursion would have to be converted to counting balanced groups:
^ # start of string
(?:
(?: [^?+*{}()[\]\\|]+ # literals and ^, $
| \\. # escaped characters
| \[ (?: \^?\\. | \^[^\\] | [^\\^] ) # character classes
(?: [^\]\\]+ | \\. )* \]
| \( (?:\?[:=!]
| \?<[=!]
| \?>
| \?<[^\W\d]\w*>
| \?'[^\W\d]\w*'
)? # opening of group
(?<N>) # increment counter
| \) # closing of group
(?<-N>) # decrement counter
)
(?: (?:[?+*]|\{\d+(?:,\d*)?\}) [?+]? )? # quantifiers
| \| # alternative
)* # repeat content
$ # end of string
(?(N)(?!)) # fail if counter is non-zero.
Compacted:
^(?:(?:[^?+*{}()[\]\\|]+|\\.|\[(?:\^?\\.|\^[^\\]|[^\\^])(?:[^\]\\]+|\\.)*\]|\((?:\?[:=!]|\?<[=!]|\?>|\?<[^\W\d]\w*>|\?'[^\W\d]\w*')?(?<N>)|\)(?<-N>))(?:(?:[?+*]|\{\d+(?:,\d*)?\})[?+]?)?|\|)*$(?(N)(?!))
From the comments:
Will this validate substitutions and translations?
It will validate just the regex part of substitutions and translations. s/<this part>/.../
It is not theoretically possible to match all valid regex grammars with a regex.
It is possible if the regex engine supports recursion, such as PCRE, but that can't really be called regular expressions any more.
Indeed, a "recursive regular expression" is not a regular expression. But this an often-accepted extension to regex engines... Ironically, this extended regex doesn't match extended regexes.
"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not." Almost everyone who knows regular expressions knows that regular expressions does not support recursion. But PCRE and most other implementations support much more than basic regular expressions.
using this with shell script in the grep command , it shows me some error.. grep: Invalid content of {} . I am making a script that could grep a code base to find all the files that contain regular expressions
This pattern exploits an extension called recursive regular expressions. This is not supported by the POSIX flavor of regex. You could try with the -P switch, to enable the PCRE regex flavor.
Regex itself "is not a regular language and hence cannot be parsed by regular expression..."
This is true for classical regular expressions. Some modern implementations allow recursion, which makes it into a Context Free language, although it is somewhat verbose for this task.
I see where you're matching []()/\
. and other special regex characters. Where are you allowing non-special characters? It seems like this will match ^(?:[\.]+)$
, but not ^abcdefg$
. That's a valid regex.
[^?+*{}()[\]\\|]
will match any single character, not part of any of the other constructs. This includes both literal (a
- z
), and certain special characters (^
, $
, .
).
Best Answer
I wrote my URL (actually IRI, internationalized) pattern to comply with RFC 3987 (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3987.html). These are in PCRE syntax.
For absolute IRIs (internationalized):
To also allow relative IRIs:
How they were compiled (in PHP):
Edit 7 March 2011: Because of the way PHP handles backslashes in quoted strings, these are unusable by default. You'll need to double-escape backslashes except where the backslash has a special meaning in regex. You can do that this way: