How To Install re2 on CentOS 8

re2 is C++ fast alternative to backtracking RE engines

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install re2 on CentOS 8.

What is `re2`

RE2 is a C++ library providing a fast, safe, thread-friendly alternative to backtracking regular expression engines like those used in PCRE, Perl, and Python. Backtracking engines are typically full of features and convenient syntactic sugar but can be forced into taking exponential amounts of time on even small inputs. In contrast, RE2 uses automata theory to guarantee that regular expression searches run in time linear in the size of the input, at the expense of some missing features (e.g back references and generalized assertions).

We can use yum or dnf to install re2 on CentOS 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install re2.

Install re2 on CentOS 8 Using dnf

Update yum database with dnf using the following command.

sudo dnf makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install re2 using dnf by running the following command:

sudo dnf -y install re2

Install re2 on CentOS 8 Using yum

Update yum database with yum using the following command.

sudo yum makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install re2 using yum by running the following command:

sudo yum -y install re2

How To Uninstall re2 on CentOS 8

To uninstall only the re2 package we can use the following command:

sudo dnf remove re2

re2 Package Contents on CentOS 8

/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/f1
/usr/lib/.build-id/f1/7c8785540f3f3849e224602b984719860e71de
/usr/lib64/libre2.so.0
/usr/lib64/libre2.so.0.0.0
/usr/share/doc/re2
/usr/share/doc/re2/AUTHORS
/usr/share/doc/re2/CONTRIBUTORS
/usr/share/doc/re2/README
/usr/share/licenses/re2
/usr/share/licenses/re2/LICENSE

References

re2 website

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install re2 on CentOS 8 using yum and dnf.