regex - Is Python re thread-safe? -

i tried googling gotten no authoritative answer.

can confirm re module http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html thread-safe?

more specifically, functions , not?

also, can reuse single global compiled re object sub, search, etc. safely across threads?

seems there still no clear answer?

ok, more specific example:

  class myclass:      global_var = re.compile(...)       def clean(self, value):         return myclass.global_var.sub('', value)  

will work expected when multiple threads call clean @ same time?

i don't think there is authoritative answer—other digging around in source, gets answers existing versions of python not future ones—since @ least parts of versions of regular expression module written in c (at least cpython; jython, instance, knows?) , nobody seems have made promises them.

in practice have not seen bits of re code not thread-safe, , later example global_var.sub call "almost certainly" thread-safe. ... there's still darned lack of written promises. :-)