I am using gregexpr() to extract multiple pattern matches from large textstreams.

matchList = gregexpr( pattern, textstream )

After extracting multiple matches (hundreds), I want to extract the matchstrings:

matchStrings = regmatches( textstream, matchList )

I am wondering if there might be a way to parallelize the match extraction with mclapply() or such:

matchStrings = mclapply( mc.cores = numcores, matchList, regmatches, x = textstream )

I’ve also tried:

matchStrings = mclapply( mc.cores = numcores, matchList[[1]], regmatches, x = textstream )

but when I try this, I get errors from all of the cores.

I suspect it has something to do with the way that I am presenting the matchList to mclapply().

Suggestions appreciated.

I am expecting some sort of list / vector structure to be returned from mclapply() with all of the matches from the gregexpr()