pcre 8.30-Perl Compatible Regular Expressions

----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This file contains a concatenation of the PCRE man pages, converted to plain text format for ease of searching with a text editor, or for use on systems that do not have a man page processor. The small individual files that give synopses of each function in the library have not been included. Neither has the pcredemo program. There are separate text files for the pcregrep and pcretest commands. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- PCRE(3) PCRE(3) NAME PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions INTRODUCTION The PCRE library is a set of functions that implement regular expres- sion pattern matching using the same syntax and semantics as Perl, with just a few differences. Some features that appeared in Python and PCRE before they appeared in Perl are also available using the Python syn- tax, there is some support for one or two .NET and Oniguruma syntax items, and there is an option for requesting some minor changes that give better JavaScript compatibility. Starting with release 8.30, it is possible to compile two separate PCRE libraries: the original, which supports 8-bit character strings (including UTF-8 strings), and a second library that supports 16-bit character strings (including UTF-16 strings). The build process allows either one or both to be built. The majority of the work to make this possible was done by Zoltan Herczeg. The two libraries contain identical sets of functions, except that the names in the 16-bit library start with pcre16_ instead of pcre_. To avoid over-complication and reduce the documentation maintenance load, most of the documentation describes the 8-bit library, with the differ- ences for the 16-bit library described separately in the pcre16 page. References to functions or structures of the form pcre[16]_xxx should be read as meaning "pcre_xxx when using the 8-bit library and pcre16_xxx when using the 16-bit library". The current implementation of PCRE corresponds approximately with Perl 5.12, including support for UTF-8/16 encoded strings and Unicode gen- eral category properties. However, UTF-8/16 and Unicode support has to be explicitly enabled; it is not the default. The Unicode tables corre- spond to Unicode release 6.0.0. In addition to the Perl-compatible matching function, PCRE contains an alternative function that matches the same compiled patterns in a dif- ferent way. In certain circumstances, the alternative function has some advantages. For a discussion of the two matching algorithms, see the pcrematching page. PCRE is written in C and released as a C library. A number of people have written wrappers and interfaces of various kinds. In particular, Google Inc. have provided a comprehensive C++ wrapper for the 8-bit library. This is now included as part of the PCRE distribution. The pcrecpp page has details of this interface. Other people's contribu- tions can be found in the Contrib directory at the primary FTP site, which is: ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre Details of exactly which Perl regular expression features are and are not supported by PCRE are given in separate documents. See the pcrepat- tern and pcrecompat pages. There is a syntax summary in the pcresyntax page. Some features of PCRE can be included, excluded, or changed when the library is built. The pcre_config() function makes it possible for a client to discover which features are available. The features them- selves are described in the pcrebuild page. Documentation about build- ing PCRE for various operating systems can be found in the README and NON-UNIX-USE files in the source distribution. The libraries contains a number of undocumented internal functions and data tables that are used by more than one of the exported external functions, but which are not intended for use by external callers. Their names all begin with "_pcre_" or "_pcre16_", which hopefully will not provoke any name clashes. In some environments, it is possible to control which external symbols are exported when a shared library is built, and in these cases the undocumented symbols are not exported. USER DOCUMENTATION The user documentation for PCRE comprises a number of different sec- tions. In the "man" format, each of these is a separate "man page". In the HTML format, each is a separate page, linked from the index page. In the plain text format, all the sections, except the pcredemo sec- tion, are concatenated, for ease of searching. The sections are as fol- lows: pcre this document pcre16 details of the 16-bit library pcre-config show PCRE installation configuration information pcreapi details of PCRE's native C API pcrebuild options for building PCRE pcrecallout details of the callout feature pcrecompat discussion of Perl compatibility pcrecpp details of the C++ wrapper for the 8-bit library pcredemo a demonstration C program that uses PCRE pcregrep description of the pcregrep command (8-bit only) pcrejit discussion of the just-in-time optimization support pcrelimits details of size and other limits pcrematching discussion of the two matching algorithms pcrepartial details of the partial matching facility pcrepattern syntax and semantics of supported regular expressions pcreperform discussion of performance issues pcreposix the POSIX-compatible C API for the 8-bit library pcreprecompile details of saving and re-using precompiled patterns pcresample discussion of the pcredemo program pcrestack discussion of stack usage pcresyntax quick syntax reference pcretest description of the pcretest testing command pcreunicode discussion of Unicode and UTF-8/16 support In addition, in the "man" and HTML formats, there is a short page for each 8-bit C library function, listing its arguments and results. AUTHOR Philip Hazel University Computing Service Cambridge CB2 3QH, England. Putting an actual email address here seems to have been a spam magnet, so I've taken it away. If you want to email me, use my two initials, followed by the two digits 10, at the domain cam.ac.uk. REVISION Last updated: 10 January 2012 Copyright (c) 1997-2012 University of Cambridge. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ PCRE(3) PCRE(3) NAME PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions #include <pcre.h> PCRE 16-BIT API BASIC FUNCTIONS pcre16 *pcre16_compile(PCRE_SPTR16 pattern, int options, const char **errptr, int *erroffset, const unsigned char *tableptr); pcre16 *pcre16_compile2(PCRE_SPTR16 pattern, int options, int *errorcodeptr, const char **errptr, int *erroffset, const unsigned char *tableptr); pcre16_extra *pcre16_study(const pcre16 *code, int