I have a related solution that's coded at my level of Pharo skillz (aka hacked). I used LibC and Perl to code a matches: method. It seems to work well, but Perl has to be in the path.

The prototype with tests is at��https://github.com/fuhrmanator/Keshi

self assert: ('a.*?com' asKSRegex matches: 'a is a test com blah blah').
	self assert: ('^(?:\w+:)?\/\/([^\s\.]+\.\S{2}\|localhost[\:?\d])\S$' asKSRegex matches: 'https://www.thisisatest.com/bhal').
	self deny: ('^(?:\w+:)?\/\/([^\s\.]+\.\S{2}\|localhost[\:?\d])\S$' asKSRegex matches: 'www.thisisatest.com/bhal').

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 00:14 ducasse via Pharo-dev <pharo-dev@lists.pharo.org> wrote:

Hi

I would really like to resurrect the REPlugin and its image side abstraction because
I think that this is important to support Perl level regex since it will help
people to reuse their knowledge.
If you are interested in helping let us know.

Stef