Refactor - remove re._compile?

Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

Here is re.compile:

>>> import re, inspect
>>> print(inspect.getsource(re.compile))
def compile(pattern, flags=0):
    "Compile a regular expression pattern, returning a Pattern object."
    return _compile(pattern, flags)

It just calls re._compile with the same arguments.

When it was introduced it looked like there was some benefit to having an "implementation hook" to swap in impl from sre_compile.py.

I think the benefit doesn't really exist anymore - it seems like there should be a slight performance improvement, and simpler tracebacks, to just move the body of _compile directly into compile.

Linked PRs

• gh-122357

Start in Lib/re/init.py, examining re.compile and re._compile and the linked work in gh-122357. Determine whether the implementation hook can be removed without changing behavior; done means the redundant indirection is gone and the regular-expression module remains functional.