It's possible, but it's certainly not easy. Here are some complications: 1. The DFA-regex engine's syntax must be a subset of PCRE's syntax. If it's not, then

It's possible, but it's certainly not easy. Here are some complications: 1. The DFA-regex engine's syntax must be a subset of PCRE's syntax. If it's not, then users will be very confused when regex features work fine in isolation, but cause errors when combined in the same query. 2. The DFA-regex's behavior must be the same as PCRE. If whitespace matching or unicode support is even slightly different, it will frustrate users. 3. Adding another dependency means yet another way in which compilation can fail or incompatibilities can arise. Considering the marginal usefulness of backtracking and captures, I'd prefer to keep ag as simple as possible and ditch them.