TRE Python binding — ReDoS robustness demo

# Research: TRE Python binding — ReDoS robustness demo Source: [https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/4/tre-python-binding/](https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/4/tre-python-binding/) Research[TRE Python binding — ReDoS robustness demo](https://github.com/simonw/research/tree/main/tre-python-binding#readme)— Demonstrating robust regex performance, this project offers a minimal Python ctypes binding to the TRE regex library, highlighting TRE’s immunity to regular expression denial\-of\-service \(ReDoS\) attacks that cripple Python's built\-in \`re\` module\. Key benchmarks show that TRE processes even notorious "evil" patterns on gigantic inputs \(10 million characters\) much faster than \`re\` on tiny ones, and scales linearly with input size instead of exponentially\. If it's[good enough for antirez](https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/4/redis-array/)to add to Redis I figured Ville Laurikari's[TRE](https://github.com/laurikari/tre/)regular expression engine was worth exploring in a little more detail\. I had Claude Code build an experimental Python binding \(it used`ctypes`\) and try some malicious regular expression attacks against the library\. TRE handles those much better than Python's standard library implementation, thanks mainly to the lack of support for backtracking\.