authors: catastrophic backtracking in regex

[jacquerie]

How to reproduce:

>>> from refextract import extract_references_from_string
>>> extract_references_from_string('G. W. and L. B. and M. M. G. and T. A. and E. L. I. and E. P. and X. M. and B. Urbaszek, Magneto-optics in transition metal diselenide monolayers. 2D Mater. 2, 34002 (2015).')

this hangs refextract for, at least, days.

The reason appears to be catastrophic backtracking in this regex:

refextract/refextract/authors/regexs.py

Lines 491 to 494 in 27588da

	re_weaker_author = ur"""
	## look closely for initials, and less closely at the last name.
	(?:([A-Z]((\.\s?)|(\.?\s+)|(\-))){1,5}
	(?:[^\s_<>0-9]+(?:(?:[,\.]\s*)|(?:[,\.]?\s+)))+)"""

.

[david-caro]

This is the article that causes the issue, it should be reharvested once this is fixed: arXiv:1704.00841

[kaplun]

@tsgit are you by chance going to work on this issue in the near future? For the time being we have a workaround, but the approach you outlined in chat sounded way better than a workaround.

[tsgit]

@kaplun yes, very high on my todo list. unfortunately got pushed back by AAHEP, vacation, surgery and some other business -- by next week!