does PCRE work in conversion C to hdl?

Dear all,

Did any one try to use PCRE?

http://www.pcre.org/

Does it really work on converting c to vhdl / hdl?

I've read this article " Compiling PCRE to FPGA for Accelerating SNORT IDS" by Abhishek Mitra, Walid Najjar, Laxmi Bhuyan.

They have try it with Xilinx and it is working.

- Is there any alternative tool to do the same on Altera?

Thanks in advance to your answers. :))