Re: [Grep-devel] [PATCH 0/4] search backend thread safety

[Paul Eggert]

Although this patch seems like a good idea for general applications, could you 
explain why it helps grep in particular? grep compiles the r.e. in the main 
thread, and presumably will use it in subthreads. After compilation, the 
compiled r.e. should never change, so it should be OK for grep to keep it in a 
global variable shared among the subthreads.