It is actually based on regex (on a low level). But the key difference -- it allows named patterns, modules, templates, and kind of classes. So, you may have a separate module with a definitions of related patterns - for instance, module for date and time patterns, module for location patterns, etc... then, you can include required module to your project and refer to these patterns (by name) from your own patterns.. like "{PERSON_NAME}[,:\s]?{JOB_TITLE}" may be a pattern which matches person name followed by optional punctuation and the by job title... where PERSON_NAME and JOB_TITLE are quite complicated patterns defined somewhere else.

Another key difference - it supports huge lookup dictionaries -- i.e. part of your pattern may be reference to dictionary which may contain thousands or even millions of entries... so, PERSON_NAME can be a dictionary.

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