Yes the state machine data structure are also used in regex engines. The author of the fst crate also created Rust's regex crate and the ripgrep [0] CLI tool.

Yes the state machine data structure are also used in regex engines. The author of the fst crate also created Rust's regex crate and the ripgrep [0] CLI tool. The regex crate has multiple implementations of regex matching algorithms, which is exposed as a library [1]. The implementations are selected at runtime based on which is faster and works right for a given regex. See also [2] [0] https://blog.burntsushi.net/ripgrep/ https://blog.burntsushi.net/ripgrep/ [1] https://blog.burntsushi.net/regex-internals/ https://blog.burntsushi.net/regex-internals/ [2] https://docs.rs/regex-automata/latest/regex_automata/#available-regex-engines https://docs.rs/regex-automata/latest/regex_automata/#availa...