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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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) Library Functions Manual PCRE(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions (original API)
PLEASE TAKE NOTE
This document relates to PCRE releases that use the original API, with
library names libpcre, libpcre16, and libpcre32. January 2015 saw the
first release of a new API, known as PCRE2, with release numbers start-
ing at 10.00 and library names libpcre2-8, libpcre2-16, and
libpcre2-32. The old libraries (now called PCRE1) are still being main-
tained for bug fixes, but there will be no new development. New
projects are advised to use the new PCRE2 libraries.
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.
Starting with release 8.32 it is possible to compile a third separate
PCRE library that supports 32-bit character strings (including UTF-32
strings). The build process allows any combination of the 8-, 16- and
32-bit libraries. The work to make this possible was done by Christian
Persch.
The three libraries contain identical sets of functions, except that
the names in the 16-bit library start with pcre16_ instead of pcre_,
and the names in the 32-bit library start with pcre32_ instead of
pcre_. To avoid over-complication and reduce the documentation mainte-
nance load, most of the documentation describes the 8-bit library, with
the differences for the 16-bit and 32-bit libraries described sepa-
rately in the pcre16 and pcre32 pages. References to functions or
structures of the form pcre[16|32]_xxx should be read as meaning
"pcre_xxx when using the 8-bit library, pcre16_xxx when using the
16-bit library, or pcre32_xxx when using the 32-bit library".
The current implementation of PCRE corresponds approximately with Perl
5.12, including support for UTF-8/16/32 encoded strings and Unicode
general category properties. However, UTF-8/16/32 and Unicode support
has to be explicitly enabled; it is not the default. The Unicode tables
correspond to Unicode release 6.3.0.
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-AUTOTOOLS_BUILD 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_" or "_pcre32_", 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.
SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
If you are using PCRE in a non-UTF application that permits users to
supply arbitrary patterns for compilation, you should be aware of a
feature that allows users to turn on UTF support from within a pattern,
provided that PCRE was built with UTF support. For example, an 8-bit
pattern that begins with "(*UTF8)" or "(*UTF)" turns on UTF-8 mode,
which interprets patterns and subjects as strings of UTF-8 characters
instead of individual 8-bit characters. This causes both the pattern
and any data against which it is matched to be checked for UTF-8 valid-
ity. If the data string is very long, such a check might use suffi-
ciently many resources as to cause your application to lose perfor-
mance.
One way of guarding against this possibility is to use the
pcre_fullinfo() function to check the compiled pattern's options for
UTF. Alternatively, from release 8.33, you can set the PCRE_NEVER_UTF
option at compile time. This causes an compile time error if a pattern
contains a UTF-setting sequence.
If your application is one that supports UTF, be aware that validity
checking can take time. If the same data string is to be matched many
times, you can use the PCRE_NO_UTF[8|16|32]_CHECK option for the second
and subsequent matches to save redundant checks.
Another way that performance can be hit is by running a pattern that
has a very large search tree against a string that will never match.
Nested unlimited repeats in a pattern are a common example. PCRE pro-
vides some protection against this: see the PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT fea-
ture in the pcreapi page.
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, the descriptions of the pcregrep and pcretest
programs are in files called pcregrep.txt and pcretest.txt, respec-
tively. The remaining sections, except for the pcredemo section (which
is a program listing), are concatenated in pcre.txt, for ease of
searching. The sections are as follows:
pcre this document
pcre-config show PCRE installation configuration information
pcre16 details of the 16-bit library
pcre32 details of the 32-bit library
pcreapi details of PCRE's native C API
pcrebuild 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-8/16/32 support
In the "man" and HTML formats, there is also a short page for each 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 February 2015
Copyright (c) 1997-2015 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCRE(3) Library Functions Manual 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 options,
const char **errptr);
void pcre16_free_study(pcre16_extra *extra);
int pcre16_exec(const pcre16 *code, const pcre16_extra *extra,
PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int length, int startoffset,
int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize);
int pcre16_dfa_exec(const pcre16 *code, const pcre16_extra *extra,
PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int length, int startoffset,
int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize,
int *workspace, int wscount);
PCRE 16-BIT API STRING EXTRACTION FUNCTIONS
int pcre16_copy_named_substring(const pcre16 *code,
PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, PCRE_SPTR16 stringname,
PCRE_UCHAR16 *buffer, int buffersize);
int pcre16_copy_substring(PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, int stringnumber, PCRE_UCHAR16 *buffer,
int buffersize);
int pcre16_get_named_substring(const pcre16 *code,
PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, PCRE_SPTR16 stringname,
PCRE_SPTR16 *stringptr);
int pcre16_get_stringnumber(const pcre16 *code,
PCRE_SPTR16 name);
int pcre16_get_stringtable_entries(const pcre16 *code,
PCRE_SPTR16 name, PCRE_UCHAR16 **first, PCRE_UCHAR16 **last);
int pcre16_get_substring(PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, int stringnumber,
PCRE_SPTR16 *stringptr);
int pcre16_get_substring_list(PCRE_SPTR16 subject,
int *ovector, int stringcount, PCRE_SPTR16 **listptr);
void pcre16_free_substring(PCRE_SPTR16 stringptr);
void pcre16_free_substring_list(PCRE_SPTR16 *stringptr);
PCRE 16-BIT API AUXILIARY FUNCTIONS
pcre16_jit_stack *pcre16_jit_stack_alloc(int startsize, int maxsize);
void pcre16_jit_stack_free(pcre16_jit_stack *stack);
void pcre16_assign_jit_stack(pcre16_extra *extra,
pcre16_jit_callback callback, void *data);
const unsigned char *pcre16_maketables(void);
int pcre16_fullinfo(const pcre16 *code, const pcre16_extra *extra,
int what, void *where);
int pcre16_refcount(pcre16 *code, int adjust);
int pcre16_config(int what, void *where);
const char *pcre16_version(void);
int pcre16_pattern_to_host_byte_order(pcre16 *code,
pcre16_extra *extra, const unsigned char *tables);
PCRE 16-BIT API INDIRECTED FUNCTIONS
void *(*pcre16_malloc)(size_t);
void (*pcre16_free)(void *);
void *(*pcre16_stack_malloc)(size_t);
void (*pcre16_stack_free)(void *);
int (*pcre16_callout)(pcre16_callout_block *);
PCRE 16-BIT API 16-BIT-ONLY FUNCTION
int pcre16_utf16_to_host_byte_order(PCRE_UCHAR16 *output,
PCRE_SPTR16 input, int length, int *byte_order,
int keep_boms);
THE PCRE 16-BIT LIBRARY
Starting with release 8.30, it is possible to compile a PCRE library
that supports 16-bit character strings, including UTF-16 strings, as
well as or instead of the original 8-bit library. The majority of the
work to make this possible was done by Zoltan Herczeg. The two
libraries contain identical sets of functions, used in exactly the same
way. Only the names of the functions and the data types of their argu-
ments and results are different. To avoid over-complication and reduce
the documentation maintenance load, most of the PCRE documentation
describes the 8-bit library, with only occasional references to the
16-bit library. This page describes what is different when you use the
16-bit library.
WARNING: A single application can be linked with both libraries, but
you must take care when processing any particular pattern to use func-
tions from just one library. For example, if you want to study a pat-
tern that was compiled with pcre16_compile(), you must do so with
pcre16_study(), not pcre_study(), and you must free the study data with
pcre16_free_study().
THE HEADER FILE
There is only one header file, pcre.h. It contains prototypes for all
the functions in all libraries, as well as definitions of flags, struc-
tures, error codes, etc.
THE LIBRARY NAME
In Unix-like systems, the 16-bit library is called libpcre16, and can
normally be accesss by adding -lpcre16 to the command for linking an
application that uses PCRE.
STRING TYPES
In the 8-bit library, strings are passed to PCRE library functions as
vectors of bytes with the C type "char *". In the 16-bit library,
strings are passed as vectors of unsigned 16-bit quantities. The macro
PCRE_UCHAR16 specifies an appropriate data type, and PCRE_SPTR16 is
defined as "const PCRE_UCHAR16 *". In very many environments, "short
int" is a 16-bit data type. When PCRE is built, it defines PCRE_UCHAR16
as "unsigned short int", but checks that it really is a 16-bit data
type. If it is not, the build fails with an error message telling the
maintainer to modify the definition appropriately.
STRUCTURE TYPES
The types of the opaque structures that are used for compiled 16-bit
patterns and JIT stacks are pcre16 and pcre16_jit_stack respectively.
The type of the user-accessible structure that is returned by
pcre16_study() is pcre16_extra, and the type of the structure that is
used for passing data to a callout function is pcre16_callout_block.
These structures contain the same fields, with the same names, as their
8-bit counterparts. The only difference is that pointers to character
strings are 16-bit instead of 8-bit types.
16-BIT FUNCTIONS
For every function in the 8-bit library there is a corresponding func-
tion in the 16-bit library with a name that starts with pcre16_ instead
of pcre_. The prototypes are listed above. In addition, there is one
extra function, pcre16_utf16_to_host_byte_order(). This is a utility
function that converts a UTF-16 character string to host byte order if
necessary. The other 16-bit functions expect the strings they are
passed to be in host byte order.
The input and output arguments of pcre16_utf16_to_host_byte_order() may
point to the same address, that is, conversion in place is supported.
The output buffer must be at least as long as the input.
The length argument specifies the number of 16-bit data units in the
input string; a negative value specifies a zero-terminated string.
If byte_order is NULL, it is assumed that the string starts off in host
byte order. This may be changed by byte-order marks (BOMs) anywhere in
the string (commonly as the first character).
If byte_order is not NULL, a non-zero value of the integer to which it
points means that the input starts off in host byte order, otherwise
the opposite order is assumed. Again, BOMs in the string can change
this. The final byte order is passed back at the end of processing.
If keep_boms is not zero, byte-order mark characters (0xfeff) are
copied into the output string. Otherwise they are discarded.
The result of the function is the number of 16-bit units placed into
the output buffer, including the zero terminator if the string was
zero-terminated.
SUBJECT STRING OFFSETS
The lengths and starting offsets of subject strings must be specified
in 16-bit data units, and the offsets within subject strings that are
returned by the matching functions are in also 16-bit units rather than
bytes.
NAMED SUBPATTERNS
The name-to-number translation table that is maintained for named sub-
patterns uses 16-bit characters. The pcre16_get_stringtable_entries()
function returns the length of each entry in the table as the number of
16-bit data units.
OPTION NAMES
There are two new general option names, PCRE_UTF16 and
PCRE_NO_UTF16_CHECK, which correspond to PCRE_UTF8 and
PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK in the 8-bit library. In fact, these new options
define the same bits in the options word. There is a discussion about
the validity of UTF-16 strings in the pcreunicode page.
For the pcre16_config() function there is an option PCRE_CONFIG_UTF16
that returns 1 if UTF-16 support is configured, otherwise 0. If this
option is given to pcre_config() or pcre32_config(), or if the
PCRE_CONFIG_UTF8 or PCRE_CONFIG_UTF32 option is given to pcre16_con-
fig(), the result is the PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION error.
CHARACTER CODES
In 16-bit mode, when PCRE_UTF16 is not set, character values are
treated in the same way as in 8-bit, non UTF-8 mode, except, of course,
that they can range from 0 to 0xffff instead of 0 to 0xff. Character
types for characters less than 0xff can therefore be influenced by the
locale in the same way as before. Characters greater than 0xff have
only one case, and no "type" (such as letter or digit).
In UTF-16 mode, the character code is Unicode, in the range 0 to
0x10ffff, with the exception of values in the range 0xd800 to 0xdfff
because those are "surrogate" values that are used in pairs to encode
values greater than 0xffff.
A UTF-16 string can indicate its endianness by special code knows as a
byte-order mark (BOM). The PCRE functions do not handle this, expecting
strings to be in host byte order. A utility function called
pcre16_utf16_to_host_byte_order() is provided to help with this (see
above).
ERROR NAMES
The errors PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF16_OFFSET and PCRE_ERROR_SHORTUTF16 corre-
spond to their 8-bit counterparts. The error PCRE_ERROR_BADMODE is
given when a compiled pattern is passed to a function that processes
patterns in the other mode, for example, if a pattern compiled with
pcre_compile() is passed to pcre16_exec().
There are new error codes whose names begin with PCRE_UTF16_ERR for
invalid UTF-16 strings, corresponding to the PCRE_UTF8_ERR codes for
UTF-8 strings that are described in the section entitled "Reason codes
for invalid UTF-8 strings" in the main pcreapi page. The UTF-16 errors
are:
PCRE_UTF16_ERR1 Missing low surrogate at end of string
PCRE_UTF16_ERR2 Invalid low surrogate follows high surrogate
PCRE_UTF16_ERR3 Isolated low surrogate
PCRE_UTF16_ERR4 Non-character
ERROR TEXTS
If there is an error while compiling a pattern, the error text that is
passed back by pcre16_compile() or pcre16_compile2() is still an 8-bit
character string, zero-terminated.
CALLOUTS
The subject and mark fields in the callout block that is passed to a
callout function point to 16-bit vectors.
TESTING
The pcretest program continues to operate with 8-bit input and output
files, but it can be used for testing the 16-bit library. If it is run
with the command line option -16, patterns and subject strings are con-
verted from 8-bit to 16-bit before being passed to PCRE, and the 16-bit
library functions are used instead of the 8-bit ones. Returned 16-bit
strings are converted to 8-bit for output. If both the 8-bit and the
32-bit libraries were not compiled, pcretest defaults to 16-bit and the
-16 option is ignored.
When PCRE is being built, the RunTest script that is called by "make
check" uses the pcretest -C option to discover which of the 8-bit,
16-bit and 32-bit libraries has been built, and runs the tests appro-
priately.
NOT SUPPORTED IN 16-BIT MODE
Not all the features of the 8-bit library are available with the 16-bit
library. The C++ and POSIX wrapper functions support only the 8-bit
library, and the pcregrep program is at present 8-bit only.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 12 May 2013
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCRE(3) Library Functions Manual PCRE(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
#include <pcre.h>
PCRE 32-BIT API BASIC FUNCTIONS
pcre32 *pcre32_compile(PCRE_SPTR32 pattern, int options,
const char **errptr, int *erroffset,
const unsigned char *tableptr);
pcre32 *pcre32_compile2(PCRE_SPTR32 pattern, int options,
int *errorcodeptr,
const unsigned char *tableptr);
pcre32_extra *pcre32_study(const pcre32 *code, int options,
const char **errptr);
void pcre32_free_study(pcre32_extra *extra);
int pcre32_exec(const pcre32 *code, const pcre32_extra *extra,
PCRE_SPTR32 subject, int length, int startoffset,
int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize);
int pcre32_dfa_exec(const pcre32 *code, const pcre32_extra *extra,
PCRE_SPTR32 subject, int length, int startoffset,
int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize,
int *workspace, int wscount);
PCRE 32-BIT API STRING EXTRACTION FUNCTIONS
int pcre32_copy_named_substring(const pcre32 *code,
PCRE_SPTR32 subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, PCRE_SPTR32 stringname,
PCRE_UCHAR32 *buffer, int buffersize);
int pcre32_copy_substring(PCRE_SPTR32 subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, int stringnumber, PCRE_UCHAR32 *buffer,
int buffersize);
int pcre32_get_named_substring(const pcre32 *code,
PCRE_SPTR32 subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, PCRE_SPTR32 stringname,
PCRE_SPTR32 *stringptr);
int pcre32_get_stringnumber(const pcre32 *code,
PCRE_SPTR32 name);
int pcre32_get_stringtable_entries(const pcre32 *code,
PCRE_SPTR32 name, PCRE_UCHAR32 **first, PCRE_UCHAR32 **last);
int pcre32_get_substring(PCRE_SPTR32 subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, int stringnumber,
PCRE_SPTR32 *stringptr);
int pcre32_get_substring_list(PCRE_SPTR32 subject,
int *ovector, int stringcount, PCRE_SPTR32 **listptr);
void pcre32_free_substring(PCRE_SPTR32 stringptr);
void pcre32_free_substring_list(PCRE_SPTR32 *stringptr);
PCRE 32-BIT API AUXILIARY FUNCTIONS
pcre32_jit_stack *pcre32_jit_stack_alloc(int startsize, int maxsize);
void pcre32_jit_stack_free(pcre32_jit_stack *stack);
void pcre32_assign_jit_stack(pcre32_extra *extra,
pcre32_jit_callback callback, void *data);
const unsigned char *pcre32_maketables(void);
int pcre32_fullinfo(const pcre32 *code, const pcre32_extra *extra,
int what, void *where);
int pcre32_refcount(pcre32 *code, int adjust);
int pcre32_config(int what, void *where);
const char *pcre32_version(void);
int pcre32_pattern_to_host_byte_order(pcre32 *code,
pcre32_extra *extra, const unsigned char *tables);
PCRE 32-BIT API INDIRECTED FUNCTIONS
void *(*pcre32_malloc)(size_t);
void (*pcre32_free)(void *);
void *(*pcre32_stack_malloc)(size_t);
void (*pcre32_stack_free)(void *);
int (*pcre32_callout)(pcre32_callout_block *);
PCRE 32-BIT API 32-BIT-ONLY FUNCTION
int pcre32_utf32_to_host_byte_order(PCRE_UCHAR32 *output,
PCRE_SPTR32 input, int length, int *byte_order,
int keep_boms);
THE PCRE 32-BIT LIBRARY
Starting with release 8.32, it is possible to compile a PCRE library
that supports 32-bit character strings, including UTF-32 strings, as
well as or instead of the original 8-bit library. This work was done by
Christian Persch, based on the work done by Zoltan Herczeg for the
16-bit library. All three libraries contain identical sets of func-
tions, used in exactly the same way. Only the names of the functions
and the data types of their arguments and results are different. To
avoid over-complication and reduce the documentation maintenance load,
most of the PCRE documentation describes the 8-bit library, with only
occasional references to the 16-bit and 32-bit libraries. This page
describes what is different when you use the 32-bit library.
WARNING: A single application can be linked with all or any of the
three libraries, but you must take care when processing any particular
pattern to use functions from just one library. For example, if you
want to study a pattern that was compiled with pcre32_compile(), you
must do so with pcre32_study(), not pcre_study(), and you must free the
study data with pcre32_free_study().
THE HEADER FILE
There is only one header file, pcre.h. It contains prototypes for all
the functions in all libraries, as well as definitions of flags, struc-
tures, error codes, etc.
THE LIBRARY NAME
In Unix-like systems, the 32-bit library is called libpcre32, and can
normally be accesss by adding -lpcre32 to the command for linking an
application that uses PCRE.
STRING TYPES
In the 8-bit library, strings are passed to PCRE library functions as
vectors of bytes with the C type "char *". In the 32-bit library,
strings are passed as vectors of unsigned 32-bit quantities. The macro
PCRE_UCHAR32 specifies an appropriate data type, and PCRE_SPTR32 is
defined as "const PCRE_UCHAR32 *". In very many environments, "unsigned
int" is a 32-bit data type. When PCRE is built, it defines PCRE_UCHAR32
as "unsigned int", but checks that it really is a 32-bit data type. If
it is not, the build fails with an error message telling the maintainer
to modify the definition appropriately.
STRUCTURE TYPES
The types of the opaque structures that are used for compiled 32-bit
patterns and JIT stacks are pcre32 and pcre32_jit_stack respectively.
The type of the user-accessible structure that is returned by
pcre32_study() is pcre32_extra, and the type of the structure that is
used for passing data to a callout function is pcre32_callout_block.
These structures contain the same fields, with the same names, as their
8-bit counterparts. The only difference is that pointers to character
strings are 32-bit instead of 8-bit types.
32-BIT FUNCTIONS
For every function in the 8-bit library there is a corresponding func-
tion in the 32-bit library with a name that starts with pcre32_ instead
of pcre_. The prototypes are listed above. In addition, there is one
extra function, pcre32_utf32_to_host_byte_order(). This is a utility
function that converts a UTF-32 character string to host byte order if
necessary. The other 32-bit functions expect the strings they are
passed to be in host byte order.
The input and output arguments of pcre32_utf32_to_host_byte_order() may
point to the same address, that is, conversion in place is supported.
The output buffer must be at least as long as the input.
The length argument specifies the number of 32-bit data units in the
input string; a negative value specifies a zero-terminated string.
If byte_order is NULL, it is assumed that the string starts off in host
byte order. This may be changed by byte-order marks (BOMs) anywhere in
the string (commonly as the first character).
If byte_order is not NULL, a non-zero value of the integer to which it
points means that the input starts off in host byte order, otherwise
the opposite order is assumed. Again, BOMs in the string can change
this. The final byte order is passed back at the end of processing.
If keep_boms is not zero, byte-order mark characters (0xfeff) are
copied into the output string. Otherwise they are discarded.
The result of the function is the number of 32-bit units placed into
the output buffer, including the zero terminator if the string was
zero-terminated.
SUBJECT STRING OFFSETS
The lengths and starting offsets of subject strings must be specified
in 32-bit data units, and the offsets within subject strings that are
returned by the matching functions are in also 32-bit units rather than
bytes.
NAMED SUBPATTERNS
The name-to-number translation table that is maintained for named sub-
patterns uses 32-bit characters. The pcre32_get_stringtable_entries()
function returns the length of each entry in the table as the number of
32-bit data units.
OPTION NAMES
There are two new general option names, PCRE_UTF32 and
PCRE_NO_UTF32_CHECK, which correspond to PCRE_UTF8 and
PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK in the 8-bit library. In fact, these new options
define the same bits in the options word. There is a discussion about
the validity of UTF-32 strings in the pcreunicode page.
For the pcre32_config() function there is an option PCRE_CONFIG_UTF32
that returns 1 if UTF-32 support is configured, otherwise 0. If this
option is given to pcre_config() or pcre16_config(), or if the
PCRE_CONFIG_UTF8 or PCRE_CONFIG_UTF16 option is given to pcre32_con-
fig(), the result is the PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION error.
CHARACTER CODES
In 32-bit mode, when PCRE_UTF32 is not set, character values are
treated in the same way as in 8-bit, non UTF-8 mode, except, of course,
that they can range from 0 to 0x7fffffff instead of 0 to 0xff. Charac-
ter types for characters less than 0xff can therefore be influenced by
the locale in the same way as before. Characters greater than 0xff
have only one case, and no "type" (such as letter or digit).
In UTF-32 mode, the character code is Unicode, in the range 0 to
0x10ffff, with the exception of values in the range 0xd800 to 0xdfff
because those are "surrogate" values that are ill-formed in UTF-32.
A UTF-32 string can indicate its endianness by special code knows as a
byte-order mark (BOM). The PCRE functions do not handle this, expecting
strings to be in host byte order. A utility function called
pcre32_utf32_to_host_byte_order() is provided to help with this (see
above).
ERROR NAMES
The error PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF32 corresponds to its 8-bit counterpart.
The error PCRE_ERROR_BADMODE is given when a compiled pattern is passed
to a function that processes patterns in the other mode, for example,
if a pattern compiled with pcre_compile() is passed to pcre32_exec().
There are new error codes whose names begin with PCRE_UTF32_ERR for
invalid UTF-32 strings, corresponding to the PCRE_UTF8_ERR codes for
UTF-8 strings that are described in the section entitled "Reason codes
for invalid UTF-8 strings" in the main pcreapi page. The UTF-32 errors
are:
PCRE_UTF32_ERR1 Surrogate character (range from 0xd800 to 0xdfff)
PCRE_UTF32_ERR2 Non-character
PCRE_UTF32_ERR3 Character > 0x10ffff
ERROR TEXTS
If there is an error while compiling a pattern, the error text that is
passed back by pcre32_compile() or pcre32_compile2() is still an 8-bit
character string, zero-terminated.
CALLOUTS
The subject and mark fields in the callout block that is passed to a
callout function point to 32-bit vectors.
TESTING
The pcretest program continues to operate with 8-bit input and output
files, but it can be used for testing the 32-bit library. If it is run
with the command line option -32, patterns and subject strings are con-
verted from 8-bit to 32-bit before being passed to PCRE, and the 32-bit
library functions are used instead of the 8-bit ones. Returned 32-bit
strings are converted to 8-bit for output. If both the 8-bit and the
16-bit libraries were not compiled, pcretest defaults to 32-bit and the
-32 option is ignored.
When PCRE is being built, the RunTest script that is called by "make
check" uses the pcretest -C option to discover which of the 8-bit,
16-bit and 32-bit libraries has been built, and runs the tests appro-
priately.
NOT SUPPORTED IN 32-BIT MODE
Not all the features of the 8-bit library are available with the 32-bit
library. The C++ and POSIX wrapper functions support only the 8-bit
library, and the pcregrep program is at present 8-bit only.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 12 May 2013
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCREBUILD(3) Library Functions Manual PCREBUILD(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
BUILDING PCRE
PCRE is distributed with a configure script that can be used to build
the library in Unix-like environments using the applications known as
Autotools. Also in the distribution are files to support building
using CMake instead of configure. The text file README contains general
information about building with Autotools (some of which is repeated
below), and also has some comments about building on various operating
systems. There is a lot more information about building PCRE without
using Autotools (including information about using CMake and building
"by hand") in the text file called NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD. You should
consult this file as well as the README file if you are building in a
non-Unix-like environment.
PCRE BUILD-TIME OPTIONS
The rest of this document describes the optional features of PCRE that
can be selected when the library is compiled. It assumes use of the
configure script, where the optional features are selected or dese-
lected by providing options to configure before running the make com-
mand. However, the same options can be selected in both Unix-like and
non-Unix-like environments using the GUI facility of cmake-gui if you
are using CMake instead of configure to build PCRE.
If you are not using Autotools or CMake, option selection can be done
by editing the config.h file, or by passing parameter settings to the
compiler, as described in NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD.
The complete list of options for configure (which includes the standard
ones such as the selection of the installation directory) can be
obtained by running
./configure --help
The following sections include descriptions of options whose names
begin with --enable or --disable. These settings specify changes to the
defaults for the configure command. Because of the way that configure
works, --enable and --disable always come in pairs, so the complemen-
tary option always exists as well, but as it specifies the default, it
is not described.
BUILDING 8-BIT, 16-BIT AND 32-BIT LIBRARIES
By default, a library called libpcre is built, containing functions
that take string arguments contained in vectors of bytes, either as
single-byte characters, or interpreted as UTF-8 strings. You can also
build a separate library, called libpcre16, in which strings are con-
tained in vectors of 16-bit data units and interpreted either as sin-
gle-unit characters or UTF-16 strings, by adding
--enable-pcre16
to the configure command. You can also build yet another separate
library, called libpcre32, in which strings are contained in vectors of
32-bit data units and interpreted either as single-unit characters or
UTF-32 strings, by adding
--enable-pcre32
to the configure command. If you do not want the 8-bit library, add
--disable-pcre8
as well. At least one of the three libraries must be built. Note that
the C++ and POSIX wrappers are for the 8-bit library only, and that
pcregrep is an 8-bit program. None of these are built if you select
only the 16-bit or 32-bit libraries.
BUILDING SHARED AND STATIC LIBRARIES
The Autotools PCRE building process uses libtool to build both shared
and static libraries by default. You can suppress one of these by
adding one of
--disable-shared
--disable-static
to the configure command, as required.
C++ SUPPORT
By default, if the 8-bit library is being built, the configure script
will search for a C++ compiler and C++ header files. If it finds them,
it automatically builds the C++ wrapper library (which supports only
8-bit strings). You can disable this by adding
--disable-cpp
to the configure command.
UTF-8, UTF-16 AND UTF-32 SUPPORT
To build PCRE with support for UTF Unicode character strings, add
--enable-utf
to the configure command. This setting applies to all three libraries,
adding support for UTF-8 to the 8-bit library, support for UTF-16 to
the 16-bit library, and support for UTF-32 to the to the 32-bit
library. There are no separate options for enabling UTF-8, UTF-16 and
UTF-32 independently because that would allow ridiculous settings such
as requesting UTF-16 support while building only the 8-bit library. It
is not possible to build one library with UTF support and another with-
out in the same configuration. (For backwards compatibility, --enable-
utf8 is a synonym of --enable-utf.)
Of itself, this setting does not make PCRE treat strings as UTF-8,
UTF-16 or UTF-32. As well as compiling PCRE with this option, you also
have have to set the PCRE_UTF8, PCRE_UTF16 or PCRE_UTF32 option (as
appropriate) when you call one of the pattern compiling functions.
If you set --enable-utf when compiling in an EBCDIC environment, PCRE
expects its input to be either ASCII or UTF-8 (depending on the run-
time option). It is not possible to support both EBCDIC and UTF-8 codes
in the same version of the library. Consequently, --enable-utf and
--enable-ebcdic are mutually exclusive.
UNICODE CHARACTER PROPERTY SUPPORT
UTF support allows the libraries to process character codepoints up to
0x10ffff in the strings that they handle. On its own, however, it does
not provide any facilities for accessing the properties of such charac-
ters. If you want to be able to use the pattern escapes \P, \p, and \X,
which refer to Unicode character properties, you must add
--enable-unicode-properties
to the configure command. This implies UTF support, even if you have
not explicitly requested it.
Including Unicode property support adds around 30K of tables to the
PCRE library. Only the general category properties such as Lu and Nd
are supported. Details are given in the pcrepattern documentation.
JUST-IN-TIME COMPILER SUPPORT
Just-in-time compiler support is included in the build by specifying
--enable-jit
This support is available only for certain hardware architectures. If
this option is set for an unsupported architecture, a compile time
error occurs. See the pcrejit documentation for a discussion of JIT
usage. When JIT support is enabled, pcregrep automatically makes use of
it, unless you add
--disable-pcregrep-jit
to the "configure" command.
CODE VALUE OF NEWLINE
By default, PCRE interprets the linefeed (LF) character as indicating
the end of a line. This is the normal newline character on Unix-like
systems. You can compile PCRE to use carriage return (CR) instead, by
adding
--enable-newline-is-cr
to the configure command. There is also a --enable-newline-is-lf
option, which explicitly specifies linefeed as the newline character.
Alternatively, you can specify that line endings are to be indicated by
the two character sequence CRLF. If you want this, add
--enable-newline-is-crlf
to the configure command. There is a fourth option, specified by
--enable-newline-is-anycrlf
which causes PCRE to recognize any of the three sequences CR, LF, or
CRLF as indicating a line ending. Finally, a fifth option, specified by
--enable-newline-is-any
causes PCRE to recognize any Unicode newline sequence.
Whatever line ending convention is selected when PCRE is built can be
overridden when the library functions are called. At build time it is
conventional to use the standard for your operating system.
WHAT \R MATCHES
By default, the sequence \R in a pattern matches any Unicode newline
sequence, whatever has been selected as the line ending sequence. If
you specify
--enable-bsr-anycrlf
the default is changed so that \R matches only CR, LF, or CRLF. What-
ever is selected when PCRE is built can be overridden when the library
functions are called.
POSIX MALLOC USAGE
When the 8-bit library is called through the POSIX interface (see the
pcreposix documentation), additional working storage is required for
holding the pointers to capturing substrings, because PCRE requires
three integers per substring, whereas the POSIX interface provides only
two. If the number of expected substrings is small, the wrapper func-
tion uses space on the stack, because this is faster than using mal-
loc() for each call. The default threshold above which the stack is no
longer used is 10; it can be changed by adding a setting such as
--with-posix-malloc-threshold=20
to the configure command.
HANDLING VERY LARGE PATTERNS
Within a compiled pattern, offset values are used to point from one
part to another (for example, from an opening parenthesis to an alter-
nation metacharacter). By default, in the 8-bit and 16-bit libraries,
two-byte values are used for these offsets, leading to a maximum size
for a compiled pattern of around 64K. This is sufficient to handle all
but the most gigantic patterns. Nevertheless, some people do want to
process truly enormous patterns, so it is possible to compile PCRE to
use three-byte or four-byte offsets by adding a setting such as
--with-link-size=3
to the configure command. The value given must be 2, 3, or 4. For the
16-bit library, a value of 3 is rounded up to 4. In these libraries,
using longer offsets slows down the operation of PCRE because it has to
load additional data when handling them. For the 32-bit library the
value is always 4 and cannot be overridden; the value of --with-link-
size is ignored.
AVOIDING EXCESSIVE STACK USAGE
When matching with the pcre_exec() function, PCRE implements backtrack-
ing by making recursive calls to an internal function called match().
In environments where the size of the stack is limited, this can se-
verely limit PCRE's operation. (The Unix environment does not usually
suffer from this problem, but it may sometimes be necessary to increase
the maximum stack size. There is a discussion in the pcrestack docu-
mentation.) An alternative approach to recursion that uses memory from
the heap to remember data, instead of using recursive function calls,
has been implemented to work round the problem of limited stack size.
If you want to build a version of PCRE that works this way, add
--disable-stack-for-recursion
to the configure command. With this configuration, PCRE will use the
pcre_stack_malloc and pcre_stack_free variables to call memory manage-
ment functions. By default these point to malloc() and free(), but you
can replace the pointers so that your own functions are used instead.
Separate functions are provided rather than using pcre_malloc and
pcre_free because the usage is very predictable: the block sizes
requested are always the same, and the blocks are always freed in
reverse order. A calling program might be able to implement optimized
functions that perform better than malloc() and free(). PCRE runs
noticeably more slowly when built in this way. This option affects only
the pcre_exec() function; it is not relevant for pcre_dfa_exec().
LIMITING PCRE RESOURCE USAGE
Internally, PCRE has a function called match(), which it calls repeat-
edly (sometimes recursively) when matching a pattern with the
pcre_exec() function. By controlling the maximum number of times this
function may be called during a single matching operation, a limit can
be placed on the resources used by a single call to pcre_exec(). The
limit can be changed at run time, as described in the pcreapi documen-
tation. The default is 10 million, but this can be changed by adding a
setting such as
--with-match-limit=500000
to the configure command. This setting has no effect on the
pcre_dfa_exec() matching function.
In some environments it is desirable to limit the depth of recursive
calls of match() more strictly than the total number of calls, in order
to restrict the maximum amount of stack (or heap, if --disable-stack-
for-recursion is specified) that is used. A second limit controls this;
it defaults to the value that is set for --with-match-limit, which
imposes no additional constraints. However, you can set a lower limit
by adding, for example,
--with-match-limit-recursion=10000
to the configure command. This value can also be overridden at run
time.
CREATING CHARACTER TABLES AT BUILD TIME
PCRE uses fixed tables for processing characters whose code values are
less than 256. By default, PCRE is built with a set of tables that are
distributed in the file pcre_chartables.c.dist. These tables are for
ASCII codes only. If you add
--enable-rebuild-chartables
to the configure command, the distributed tables are no longer used.
Instead, a program called dftables is compiled and run. This outputs
the source for new set of tables, created in the default locale of your
C run-time system. (This method of replacing the tables does not work
if you are cross compiling, because dftables is run on the local host.
If you need to create alternative tables when cross compiling, you will
have to do so "by hand".)
USING EBCDIC CODE
PCRE assumes by default that it will run in an environment where the
character code is ASCII (or Unicode, which is a superset of ASCII).
This is the case for most computer operating systems. PCRE can, how-
ever, be compiled to run in an EBCDIC environment by adding
--enable-ebcdic
to the configure command. This setting implies --enable-rebuild-charta-
bles. You should only use it if you know that you are in an EBCDIC
environment (for example, an IBM mainframe operating system). The
--enable-ebcdic option is incompatible with --enable-utf.
The EBCDIC character that corresponds to an ASCII LF is assumed to have
the value 0x15 by default. However, in some EBCDIC environments, 0x25
is used. In such an environment you should use
--enable-ebcdic-nl25
as well as, or instead of, --enable-ebcdic. The EBCDIC character for CR
has the same value as in ASCII, namely, 0x0d. Whichever of 0x15 and
0x25 is not chosen as LF is made to correspond to the Unicode NEL char-
acter (which, in Unicode, is 0x85).
The options that select newline behaviour, such as --enable-newline-is-
cr, and equivalent run-time options, refer to these character values in
an EBCDIC environment.
PCREGREP OPTIONS FOR COMPRESSED FILE SUPPORT
By default, pcregrep reads all files as plain text. You can build it so
that it recognizes files whose names end in .gz or .bz2, and reads them
with libz or libbz2, respectively, by adding one or both of
--enable-pcregrep-libz
--enable-pcregrep-libbz2
to the configure command. These options naturally require that the rel-
evant libraries are installed on your system. Configuration will fail
if they are not.
PCREGREP BUFFER SIZE
pcregrep uses an internal buffer to hold a "window" on the file it is
scanning, in order to be able to output "before" and "after" lines when
it finds a match. The size of the buffer is controlled by a parameter
whose default value is 20K. The buffer itself is three times this size,
but because of the way it is used for holding "before" lines, the long-
est line that is guaranteed to be processable is the parameter size.
You can change the default parameter value by adding, for example,
--with-pcregrep-bufsize=50K
to the configure command. The caller of pcregrep can, however, override
this value by specifying a run-time option.
PCRETEST OPTION FOR LIBREADLINE SUPPORT
If you add
--enable-pcretest-libreadline
to the configure command, pcretest is linked with the libreadline
library, and when its input is from a terminal, it reads it using the
readline() function. This provides line-editing and history facilities.
Note that libreadline is GPL-licensed, so if you distribute a binary of
pcretest linked in this way, there may be licensing issues.
Setting this option causes the -lreadline option to be added to the
pcretest build. In many operating environments with a sytem-installed
libreadline this is sufficient. However, in some environments (e.g. if
an unmodified distribution version of readline is in use), some extra
configuration may be necessary. The INSTALL file for libreadline says
this:
"Readline uses the termcap functions, but does not link with the
termcap or curses library itself, allowing applications which link
with readline the to choose an appropriate library."
If your environment has not been set up so that an appropriate library
is automatically included, you may need to add something like
LIBS="-ncurses"
immediately before the configure command.
DEBUGGING WITH VALGRIND SUPPORT
By adding the
--enable-valgrind
option to to the configure command, PCRE will use valgrind annotations
to mark certain memory regions as unaddressable. This allows it to
detect invalid memory accesses, and is mostly useful for debugging PCRE
itself.
CODE COVERAGE REPORTING
If your C compiler is gcc, you can build a version of PCRE that can
generate a code coverage report for its test suite. To enable this, you
must install lcov version 1.6 or above. Then specify
--enable-coverage
to the configure command and build PCRE in the usual way.
Note that using ccache (a caching C compiler) is incompatible with code
coverage reporting. If you have configured ccache to run automatically
on your system, you must set the environment variable
CCACHE_DISABLE=1
before running make to build PCRE, so that ccache is not used.
When --enable-coverage is used, the following addition targets are
added to the Makefile:
make coverage
This creates a fresh coverage report for the PCRE test suite. It is
equivalent to running "make coverage-reset", "make coverage-baseline",
"make check", and then "make coverage-report".
make coverage-reset
This zeroes the coverage counters, but does nothing else.
make coverage-baseline
This captures baseline coverage information.
make coverage-report
This creates the coverage report.
make coverage-clean-report
This removes the generated coverage report without cleaning the cover-
age data itself.
make coverage-clean-data
This removes the captured coverage data without removing the coverage
files created at compile time (*.gcno).
make coverage-clean
This cleans all coverage data including the generated coverage report.
For more information about code coverage, see the gcov and lcov docu-
mentation.
SEE ALSO
pcreapi(3), pcre16, pcre32, pcre_config(3).
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 12 May 2013
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCREMATCHING(3) Library Functions Manual PCREMATCHING(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
PCRE MATCHING ALGORITHMS
This document describes the two different algorithms that are available
in PCRE for matching a compiled regular expression against a given sub-
ject string. The "standard" algorithm is the one provided by the
pcre_exec(), pcre16_exec() and pcre32_exec() functions. These work in
the same as as Perl's matching function, and provide a Perl-compatible
matching operation. The just-in-time (JIT) optimization that is
described in the pcrejit documentation is compatible with these func-
tions.
An alternative algorithm is provided by the pcre_dfa_exec(),
pcre16_dfa_exec() and pcre32_dfa_exec() functions; they operate in a
different way, and are not Perl-compatible. This alternative has advan-
tages and disadvantages compared with the standard algorithm, and these
are described below.
When there is only one possible way in which a given subject string can
match a pattern, the two algorithms give the same answer. A difference
arises, however, when there are multiple possibilities. For example, if
the pattern
^<.*>
is matched against the string
<something> <something else> <something further>
there are three possible answers. The standard algorithm finds only one
of them, whereas the alternative algorithm finds all three.
REGULAR EXPRESSIONS AS TREES
The set of strings that are matched by a regular expression can be rep-
resented as a tree structure. An unlimited repetition in the pattern
makes the tree of infinite size, but it is still a tree. Matching the
pattern to a given subject string (from a given starting point) can be
thought of as a search of the tree. There are two ways to search a
tree: depth-first and breadth-first, and these correspond to the two
matching algorithms provided by PCRE.
THE STANDARD MATCHING ALGORITHM
In the terminology of Jeffrey Friedl's book "Mastering Regular Expres-
sions", the standard algorithm is an "NFA algorithm". It conducts a
depth-first search of the pattern tree. That is, it proceeds along a
single path through the tree, checking that the subject matches what is
required. When there is a mismatch, the algorithm tries any alterna-
tives at the current point, and if they all fail, it backs up to the
previous branch point in the tree, and tries the next alternative
branch at that level. This often involves backing up (moving to the
left) in the subject string as well. The order in which repetition
branches are tried is controlled by the greedy or ungreedy nature of
the quantifier.
If a leaf node is reached, a matching string has been found, and at
that point the algorithm stops. Thus, if there is more than one possi-
ble match, this algorithm returns the first one that it finds. Whether
this is the shortest, the longest, or some intermediate length depends
on the way the greedy and ungreedy repetition quantifiers are specified
in the pattern.
Because it ends up with a single path through the tree, it is rela-
tively straightforward for this algorithm to keep track of the sub-
strings that are matched by portions of the pattern in parentheses.
This provides support for capturing parentheses and back references.
THE ALTERNATIVE MATCHING ALGORITHM
This algorithm conducts a breadth-first search of the tree. Starting
from the first matching point in the subject, it scans the subject
string from left to right, once, character by character, and as it does
this, it remembers all the paths through the tree that represent valid
matches. In Friedl's terminology, this is a kind of "DFA algorithm",
though it is not implemented as a traditional finite state machine (it
keeps multiple states active simultaneously).
Although the general principle of this matching algorithm is that it
scans the subject string only once, without backtracking, there is one
exception: when a lookaround assertion is encountered, the characters
following or preceding the current point have to be independently
inspected.
The scan continues until either the end of the subject is reached, or
there are no more unterminated paths. At this point, terminated paths
represent the different matching possibilities (if there are none, the
match has failed). Thus, if there is more than one possible match,
this algorithm finds all of them, and in particular, it finds the long-
est. The matches are returned in decreasing order of length. There is
an option to stop the algorithm after the first match (which is neces-
sarily the shortest) is found.
Note that all the matches that are found start at the same point in the
subject. If the pattern
cat(er(pillar)?)?
is matched against the string "the caterpillar catchment", the result
will be the three strings "caterpillar", "cater", and "cat" that start
at the fifth character of the subject. The algorithm does not automati-
cally move on to find matches that start at later positions.
PCRE's "auto-possessification" optimization usually applies to charac-
ter repeats at the end of a pattern (as well as internally). For exam-
ple, the pattern "a\d+" is compiled as if it were "a\d++" because there
is no point even considering the possibility of backtracking into the
repeated digits. For DFA matching, this means that only one possible
match is found. If you really do want multiple matches in such cases,
either use an ungreedy repeat ("a\d+?") or set the PCRE_NO_AUTO_POSSESS
option when compiling.
There are a number of features of PCRE regular expressions that are not
supported by the alternative matching algorithm. They are as follows:
1. Because the algorithm finds all possible matches, the greedy or
ungreedy nature of repetition quantifiers is not relevant. Greedy and
ungreedy quantifiers are treated in exactly the same way. However, pos-
sessive quantifiers can make a difference when what follows could also
match what is quantified, for example in a pattern like this:
^a++\w!
This pattern matches "aaab!" but not "aaa!", which would be matched by
a non-possessive quantifier. Similarly, if an atomic group is present,
it is matched as if it were a standalone pattern at the current point,
and the longest match is then "locked in" for the rest of the overall
pattern.
2. When dealing with multiple paths through the tree simultaneously, it
is not straightforward to keep track of captured substrings for the
different matching possibilities, and PCRE's implementation of this
algorithm does not attempt to do this. This means that no captured sub-
strings are available.
3. Because no substrings are captured, back references within the pat-
tern are not supported, and cause errors if encountered.
4. For the same reason, conditional expressions that use a backrefer-
ence as the condition or test for a specific group recursion are not
supported.
5. Because many paths through the tree may be active, the \K escape
sequence, which resets the start of the match when encountered (but may
be on some paths and not on others), is not supported. It causes an
error if encountered.
6. Callouts are supported, but the value of the capture_top field is
always 1, and the value of the capture_last field is always -1.
7. The \C escape sequence, which (in the standard algorithm) always
matches a single data unit, even in UTF-8, UTF-16 or UTF-32 modes, is
not supported in these modes, because the alternative algorithm moves
through the subject string one character (not data unit) at a time, for
all active paths through the tree.
8. Except for (*FAIL), the backtracking control verbs such as (*PRUNE)
are not supported. (*FAIL) is supported, and behaves like a failing
negative assertion.
ADVANTAGES OF THE ALTERNATIVE ALGORITHM
Using the alternative matching algorithm provides the following advan-
tages:
1. All possible matches (at a single point in the subject) are automat-
ically found, and in particular, the longest match is found. To find
more than one match using the standard algorithm, you have to do kludgy
things with callouts.
2. Because the alternative algorithm scans the subject string just
once, and never needs to backtrack (except for lookbehinds), it is pos-
sible to pass very long subject strings to the matching function in
several pieces, checking for partial matching each time. Although it is
possible to do multi-segment matching using the standard algorithm by
retaining partially matched substrings, it is more complicated. The
pcrepartial documentation gives details of partial matching and dis-
cusses multi-segment matching.
DISADVANTAGES OF THE ALTERNATIVE ALGORITHM
The alternative algorithm suffers from a number of disadvantages:
1. It is substantially slower than the standard algorithm. This is
partly because it has to search for all possible matches, but is also
because it is less susceptible to optimization.
2. Capturing parentheses and back references are not supported.
3. Although atomic groups are supported, their use does not provide the
performance advantage that it does for the standard algorithm.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 12 November 2013
Copyright (c) 1997-2012 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCREAPI(3) Library Functions Manual PCREAPI(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
#include <pcre.h>
PCRE NATIVE API BASIC FUNCTIONS
pcre *pcre_compile(const char *pattern, int options,
const char **errptr, int *erroffset,
const unsigned char *tableptr);
pcre *pcre_compile2(const char *pattern, int options,
int *errorcodeptr,
const char **errptr, int *erroffset,
const unsigned char *tableptr);
pcre_extra *pcre_study(const pcre *code, int options,
const char **errptr);
void pcre_free_study(pcre_extra *extra);
int pcre_exec(const pcre *code, const pcre_extra *extra,
const char *subject, int length, int startoffset,
int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize);
int pcre_dfa_exec(const pcre *code, const pcre_extra *extra,
const char *subject, int length, int startoffset,
int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize,
int *workspace, int wscount);
PCRE NATIVE API STRING EXTRACTION FUNCTIONS
int pcre_copy_named_substring(const pcre *code,
const char *subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, const char *stringname,
char *buffer, int buffersize);
int pcre_copy_substring(const char *subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, int stringnumber, char *buffer,
int buffersize);
int pcre_get_named_substring(const pcre *code,
const char *subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, const char *stringname,
const char **stringptr);
int pcre_get_stringnumber(const pcre *code,
const char *name);
int pcre_get_stringtable_entries(const pcre *code,
const char *name, char **first, char **last);
int pcre_get_substring(const char *subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, int stringnumber,
const char **stringptr);
int pcre_get_substring_list(const char *subject,
int *ovector, int stringcount, const char ***listptr);
void pcre_free_substring(const char *stringptr);
void pcre_free_substring_list(const char **stringptr);
PCRE NATIVE API AUXILIARY FUNCTIONS
int pcre_jit_exec(const pcre *code, const pcre_extra *extra,
const char *subject, int length, int startoffset,
int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize,
pcre_jit_stack *jstack);
pcre_jit_stack *pcre_jit_stack_alloc(int startsize, int maxsize);
void pcre_jit_stack_free(pcre_jit_stack *stack);
void pcre_assign_jit_stack(pcre_extra *extra,
pcre_jit_callback callback, void *data);
const unsigned char *pcre_maketables(void);
int pcre_fullinfo(const pcre *code, const pcre_extra *extra,
int what, void *where);
int pcre_refcount(pcre *code, int adjust);
int pcre_config(int what, void *where);
const char *pcre_version(void);
int pcre_pattern_to_host_byte_order(pcre *code,
pcre_extra *extra, const unsigned char *tables);
PCRE NATIVE API INDIRECTED FUNCTIONS
void *(*pcre_malloc)(size_t);
void (*pcre_free)(void *);
void *(*pcre_stack_malloc)(size_t);
void (*pcre_stack_free)(void *);
int (*pcre_callout)(pcre_callout_block *);
int (*pcre_stack_guard)(void);
PCRE 8-BIT, 16-BIT, AND 32-BIT LIBRARIES
As well as support for 8-bit character strings, PCRE also supports
16-bit strings (from release 8.30) and 32-bit strings (from release
8.32), by means of two additional libraries. They can be built as well
as, or instead of, the 8-bit library. To avoid too much complication,
this document describes the 8-bit versions of the functions, with only
occasional references to the 16-bit and 32-bit libraries.
The 16-bit and 32-bit functions operate in the same way as their 8-bit
counterparts; they just use different data types for their arguments
and results, and their names start with pcre16_ or pcre32_ instead of
pcre_. For every option that has UTF8 in its name (for example,
PCRE_UTF8), there are corresponding 16-bit and 32-bit names with UTF8
replaced by UTF16 or UTF32, respectively. This facility is in fact just
cosmetic; the 16-bit and 32-bit option names define the same bit val-
ues.
References to bytes and UTF-8 in this document should be read as refer-
ences to 16-bit data units and UTF-16 when using the 16-bit library, or
32-bit data units and UTF-32 when using the 32-bit library, unless
specified otherwise. More details of the specific differences for the
16-bit and 32-bit libraries are given in the pcre16 and pcre32 pages.
PCRE API OVERVIEW
PCRE has its own native API, which is described in this document. There
are also some wrapper functions (for the 8-bit library only) that cor-
respond to the POSIX regular expression API, but they do not give
access to all the functionality. They are described in the pcreposix
documentation. Both of these APIs define a set of C function calls. A
C++ wrapper (again for the 8-bit library only) is also distributed with
PCRE. It is documented in the pcrecpp page.
The native API C function prototypes are defined in the header file
pcre.h, and on Unix-like systems the (8-bit) library itself is called
libpcre. It can normally be accessed by adding -lpcre to the command
for linking an application that uses PCRE. The header file defines the
macros PCRE_MAJOR and PCRE_MINOR to contain the major and minor release
numbers for the library. Applications can use these to include support
for different releases of PCRE.
In a Windows environment, if you want to statically link an application
program against a non-dll pcre.a file, you must define PCRE_STATIC
before including pcre.h or pcrecpp.h, because otherwise the pcre_mal-
loc() and pcre_free() exported functions will be declared
__declspec(dllimport), with unwanted results.
The functions pcre_compile(), pcre_compile2(), pcre_study(), and
pcre_exec() are used for compiling and matching regular expressions in
a Perl-compatible manner. A sample program that demonstrates the sim-
plest way of using them is provided in the file called pcredemo.c in
the PCRE source distribution. A listing of this program is given in the
pcredemo documentation, and the pcresample documentation describes how
to compile and run it.
Just-in-time compiler support is an optional feature of PCRE that can
be built in appropriate hardware environments. It greatly speeds up the
matching performance of many patterns. Simple programs can easily
request that it be used if available, by setting an option that is
ignored when it is not relevant. More complicated programs might need
to make use of the functions pcre_jit_stack_alloc(),
pcre_jit_stack_free(), and pcre_assign_jit_stack() in order to control
the JIT code's memory usage.
From release 8.32 there is also a direct interface for JIT execution,
which gives improved performance. The JIT-specific functions are dis-
cussed in the pcrejit documentation.
A second matching function, pcre_dfa_exec(), which is not Perl-compati-
ble, is also provided. This uses a different algorithm for the match-
ing. The alternative algorithm finds all possible matches (at a given
point in the subject), and scans the subject just once (unless there
are lookbehind assertions). However, this algorithm does not return
captured substrings. A description of the two matching algorithms and
their advantages and disadvantages is given in the pcrematching docu-
mentation.
In addition to the main compiling and matching functions, there are
convenience functions for extracting captured substrings from a subject
string that is matched by pcre_exec(). They are:
pcre_copy_substring()
pcre_copy_named_substring()
pcre_get_substring()
pcre_get_named_substring()
pcre_get_substring_list()
pcre_get_stringnumber()
pcre_get_stringtable_entries()
pcre_free_substring() and pcre_free_substring_list() are also provided,
to free the memory used for extracted strings.
The function pcre_maketables() is used to build a set of character
tables in the current locale for passing to pcre_compile(),
pcre_exec(), or pcre_dfa_exec(). This is an optional facility that is
provided for specialist use. Most commonly, no special tables are
passed, in which case internal tables that are generated when PCRE is
built are used.
The function pcre_fullinfo() is used to find out information about a
compiled pattern. The function pcre_version() returns a pointer to a
string containing the version of PCRE and its date of release.
The function pcre_refcount() maintains a reference count in a data
block containing a compiled pattern. This is provided for the benefit
of object-oriented applications.
The global variables pcre_malloc and pcre_free initially contain the
entry points of the standard malloc() and free() functions, respec-
tively. PCRE calls the memory management functions via these variables,
so a calling program can replace them if it wishes to intercept the
calls. This should be done before calling any PCRE functions.
The global variables pcre_stack_malloc and pcre_stack_free are also
indirections to memory management functions. These special functions
are used only when PCRE is compiled to use the heap for remembering
data, instead of recursive function calls, when running the pcre_exec()
function. See the pcrebuild documentation for details of how to do
this. It is a non-standard way of building PCRE, for use in environ-
ments that have limited stacks. Because of the greater use of memory
management, it runs more slowly. Separate functions are provided so
that special-purpose external code can be used for this case. When
used, these functions always allocate memory blocks of the same size.
There is a discussion about PCRE's stack usage in the pcrestack docu-
mentation.
The global variable pcre_callout initially contains NULL. It can be set
by the caller to a "callout" function, which PCRE will then call at
specified points during a matching operation. Details are given in the
pcrecallout documentation.
The global variable pcre_stack_guard initially contains NULL. It can be
set by the caller to a function that is called by PCRE whenever it
starts to compile a parenthesized part of a pattern. When parentheses
are nested, PCRE uses recursive function calls, which use up the system
stack. This function is provided so that applications with restricted
stacks can force a compilation error if the stack runs out. The func-
tion should return zero if all is well, or non-zero to force an error.
NEWLINES
PCRE supports five different conventions for indicating line breaks in
strings: a single CR (carriage return) character, a single LF (line-
feed) character, the two-character sequence CRLF, any of the three pre-
ceding, or any Unicode newline sequence. The Unicode newline sequences
are the three just mentioned, plus the single characters VT (vertical
tab, U+000B), FF (form feed, U+000C), NEL (next line, U+0085), LS (line
separator, U+2028), and PS (paragraph separator, U+2029).
Each of the first three conventions is used by at least one operating
system as its standard newline sequence. When PCRE is built, a default
can be specified. The default default is LF, which is the Unix stan-
dard. When PCRE is run, the default can be overridden, either when a
pattern is compiled, or when it is matched.
At compile time, the newline convention can be specified by the options
argument of pcre_compile(), or it can be specified by special text at
the start of the pattern itself; this overrides any other settings. See
the pcrepattern page for details of the special character sequences.
In the PCRE documentation the word "newline" is used to mean "the char-
acter or pair of characters that indicate a line break". The choice of
newline convention affects the handling of the dot, circumflex, and
dollar metacharacters, the handling of #-comments in /x mode, and, when
CRLF is a recognized line ending sequence, the match position advance-
ment for a non-anchored pattern. There is more detail about this in the
section on pcre_exec() options below.
The choice of newline convention does not affect the interpretation of
the \n or \r escape sequences, nor does it affect what \R matches,
which is controlled in a similar way, but by separate options.
MULTITHREADING
The PCRE functions can be used in multi-threading applications, with
the proviso that the memory management functions pointed to by
pcre_malloc, pcre_free, pcre_stack_malloc, and pcre_stack_free, and the
callout and stack-checking functions pointed to by pcre_callout and
pcre_stack_guard, are shared by all threads.
The compiled form of a regular expression is not altered during match-
ing, so the same compiled pattern can safely be used by several threads
at once.
If the just-in-time optimization feature is being used, it needs sepa-
rate memory stack areas for each thread. See the pcrejit documentation
for more details.
SAVING PRECOMPILED PATTERNS FOR LATER USE
The compiled form of a regular expression can be saved and re-used at a
later time, possibly by a different program, and even on a host other
than the one on which it was compiled. Details are given in the
pcreprecompile documentation, which includes a description of the
pcre_pattern_to_host_byte_order() function. However, compiling a regu-
lar expression with one version of PCRE for use with a different ver-
sion is not guaranteed to work and may cause crashes.
CHECKING BUILD-TIME OPTIONS
int pcre_config(int what, void *where);
The function pcre_config() makes it possible for a PCRE client to dis-
cover which optional features have been compiled into the PCRE library.
The pcrebuild documentation has more details about these optional fea-
tures.
The first argument for pcre_config() is an integer, specifying which
information is required; the second argument is a pointer to a variable
into which the information is placed. The returned value is zero on
success, or the negative error code PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION if the value
in the first argument is not recognized. The following information is
available:
PCRE_CONFIG_UTF8
The output is an integer that is set to one if UTF-8 support is avail-
able; otherwise it is set to zero. This value should normally be given
to the 8-bit version of this function, pcre_config(). If it is given to
the 16-bit or 32-bit version of this function, the result is
PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION.
PCRE_CONFIG_UTF16
The output is an integer that is set to one if UTF-16 support is avail-
able; otherwise it is set to zero. This value should normally be given
to the 16-bit version of this function, pcre16_config(). If it is given
to the 8-bit or 32-bit version of this function, the result is
PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION.
PCRE_CONFIG_UTF32
The output is an integer that is set to one if UTF-32 support is avail-
able; otherwise it is set to zero. This value should normally be given
to the 32-bit version of this function, pcre32_config(). If it is given
to the 8-bit or 16-bit version of this function, the result is
PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION.
PCRE_CONFIG_UNICODE_PROPERTIES
The output is an integer that is set to one if support for Unicode
character properties is available; otherwise it is set to zero.
PCRE_CONFIG_JIT
The output is an integer that is set to one if support for just-in-time
compiling is available; otherwise it is set to zero.
PCRE_CONFIG_JITTARGET
The output is a pointer to a zero-terminated "const char *" string. If
JIT support is available, the string contains the name of the architec-
ture for which the JIT compiler is configured, for example "x86 32bit
(little endian + unaligned)". If JIT support is not available, the
result is NULL.
PCRE_CONFIG_NEWLINE
The output is an integer whose value specifies the default character
sequence that is recognized as meaning "newline". The values that are
supported in ASCII/Unicode environments are: 10 for LF, 13 for CR, 3338
for CRLF, -2 for ANYCRLF, and -1 for ANY. In EBCDIC environments, CR,
ANYCRLF, and ANY yield the same values. However, the value for LF is
normally 21, though some EBCDIC environments use 37. The corresponding
values for CRLF are 3349 and 3365. The default should normally corre-
spond to the standard sequence for your operating system.
PCRE_CONFIG_BSR
The output is an integer whose value indicates what character sequences
the \R escape sequence matches by default. A value of 0 means that \R
matches any Unicode line ending sequence; a value of 1 means that \R
matches only CR, LF, or CRLF. The default can be overridden when a pat-
tern is compiled or matched.
PCRE_CONFIG_LINK_SIZE
The output is an integer that contains the number of bytes used for
internal linkage in compiled regular expressions. For the 8-bit
library, the value can be 2, 3, or 4. For the 16-bit library, the value
is either 2 or 4 and is still a number of bytes. For the 32-bit
library, the value is either 2 or 4 and is still a number of bytes. The
default value of 2 is sufficient for all but the most massive patterns,
since it allows the compiled pattern to be up to 64K in size. Larger
values allow larger regular expressions to be compiled, at the expense
of slower matching.
PCRE_CONFIG_POSIX_MALLOC_THRESHOLD
The output is an integer that contains the threshold above which the
POSIX interface uses malloc() for output vectors. Further details are
given in the pcreposix documentation.
PCRE_CONFIG_PARENS_LIMIT
The output is a long integer that gives the maximum depth of nesting of
parentheses (of any kind) in a pattern. This limit is imposed to cap
the amount of system stack used when a pattern is compiled. It is spec-
ified when PCRE is built; the default is 250. This limit does not take
into account the stack that may already be used by the calling applica-
tion. For finer control over compilation stack usage, you can set a
pointer to an external checking function in pcre_stack_guard.
PCRE_CONFIG_MATCH_LIMIT
The output is a long integer that gives the default limit for the num-
ber of internal matching function calls in a pcre_exec() execution.
Further details are given with pcre_exec() below.
PCRE_CONFIG_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION
The output is a long integer that gives the default limit for the depth
of recursion when calling the internal matching function in a
pcre_exec() execution. Further details are given with pcre_exec()
below.
PCRE_CONFIG_STACKRECURSE
The output is an integer that is set to one if internal recursion when
running pcre_exec() is implemented by recursive function calls that use
the stack to remember their state. This is the usual way that PCRE is
compiled. The output is zero if PCRE was compiled to use blocks of data
on the heap instead of recursive function calls. In this case,
pcre_stack_malloc and pcre_stack_free are called to manage memory
blocks on the heap, thus avoiding the use of the stack.
COMPILING A PATTERN
pcre *pcre_compile(const char *pattern, int options,
const char **errptr, int *erroffset,
const unsigned char *tableptr);
pcre *pcre_compile2(const char *pattern, int options,
int *errorcodeptr,
const char **errptr, int *erroffset,
const unsigned char *tableptr);
Either of the functions pcre_compile() or pcre_compile2() can be called
to compile a pattern into an internal form. The only difference between
the two interfaces is that pcre_compile2() has an additional argument,
errorcodeptr, via which a numerical error code can be returned. To
avoid too much repetition, we refer just to pcre_compile() below, but
the information applies equally to pcre_compile2().
The pattern is a C string terminated by a binary zero, and is passed in
the pattern argument. A pointer to a single block of memory that is
obtained via pcre_malloc is returned. This contains the compiled code
and related data. The pcre type is defined for the returned block; this
is a typedef for a structure whose contents are not externally defined.
It is up to the caller to free the memory (via pcre_free) when it is no
longer required.
Although the compiled code of a PCRE regex is relocatable, that is, it
does not depend on memory location, the complete pcre data block is not
fully relocatable, because it may contain a copy of the tableptr argu-
ment, which is an address (see below).
The options argument contains various bit settings that affect the com-
pilation. It should be zero if no options are required. The available
options are described below. Some of them (in particular, those that
are compatible with Perl, but some others as well) can also be set and
unset from within the pattern (see the detailed description in the
pcrepattern documentation). For those options that can be different in
different parts of the pattern, the contents of the options argument
specifies their settings at the start of compilation and execution. The
PCRE_ANCHORED, PCRE_BSR_xxx, PCRE_NEWLINE_xxx, PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK, and
PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE options can be set at the time of matching as
well as at compile time.
If errptr is NULL, pcre_compile() returns NULL immediately. Otherwise,
if compilation of a pattern fails, pcre_compile() returns NULL, and
sets the variable pointed to by errptr to point to a textual error mes-
sage. This is a static string that is part of the library. You must not
try to free it. Normally, the offset from the start of the pattern to
the data unit that was being processed when the error was discovered is
placed in the variable pointed to by erroffset, which must not be NULL
(if it is, an immediate error is given). However, for an invalid UTF-8
or UTF-16 string, the offset is that of the first data unit of the
failing character.
Some errors are not detected until the whole pattern has been scanned;
in these cases, the offset passed back is the length of the pattern.
Note that the offset is in data units, not characters, even in a UTF
mode. It may sometimes point into the middle of a UTF-8 or UTF-16 char-
acter.
If pcre_compile2() is used instead of pcre_compile(), and the error-
codeptr argument is not NULL, a non-zero error code number is returned
via this argument in the event of an error. This is in addition to the
textual error message. Error codes and messages are listed below.
If the final argument, tableptr, is NULL, PCRE uses a default set of
character tables that are built when PCRE is compiled, using the
default C locale. Otherwise, tableptr must be an address that is the
result of a call to pcre_maketables(). This value is stored with the
compiled pattern, and used again by pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec()
when the pattern is matched. For more discussion, see the section on
locale support below.
This code fragment shows a typical straightforward call to pcre_com-
pile():
pcre *re;
const char *error;
int erroffset;
re = pcre_compile(
"^A.*Z", /* the pattern */
0, /* default options */
&error, /* for error message */
&erroffset, /* for error offset */
NULL); /* use default character tables */
The following names for option bits are defined in the pcre.h header
file:
PCRE_ANCHORED
If this bit is set, the pattern is forced to be "anchored", that is, it
is constrained to match only at the first matching point in the string
that is being searched (the "subject string"). This effect can also be
achieved by appropriate constructs in the pattern itself, which is the
only way to do it in Perl.
PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT
If this bit is set, pcre_compile() automatically inserts callout items,
all with number 255, before each pattern item. For discussion of the
callout facility, see the pcrecallout documentation.
PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF
PCRE_BSR_UNICODE
These options (which are mutually exclusive) control what the \R escape
sequence matches. The choice is either to match only CR, LF, or CRLF,
or to match any Unicode newline sequence. The default is specified when
PCRE is built. It can be overridden from within the pattern, or by set-
ting an option when a compiled pattern is matched.
PCRE_CASELESS
If this bit is set, letters in the pattern match both upper and lower
case letters. It is equivalent to Perl's /i option, and it can be
changed within a pattern by a (?i) option setting. In UTF-8 mode, PCRE
always understands the concept of case for characters whose values are
less than 128, so caseless matching is always possible. For characters
with higher values, the concept of case is supported if PCRE is com-
piled with Unicode property support, but not otherwise. If you want to
use caseless matching for characters 128 and above, you must ensure
that PCRE is compiled with Unicode property support as well as with
UTF-8 support.
PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY
If this bit is set, a dollar metacharacter in the pattern matches only
at the end of the subject string. Without this option, a dollar also
matches immediately before a newline at the end of the string (but not
before any other newlines). The PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY option is ignored
if PCRE_MULTILINE is set. There is no equivalent to this option in
Perl, and no way to set it within a pattern.
PCRE_DOTALL
If this bit is set, a dot metacharacter in the pattern matches a char-
acter of any value, including one that indicates a newline. However, it
only ever matches one character, even if newlines are coded as CRLF.
Without this option, a dot does not match when the current position is
at a newline. This option is equivalent to Perl's /s option, and it can
be changed within a pattern by a (?s) option setting. A negative class
such as [^a] always matches newline characters, independent of the set-
ting of this option.
PCRE_DUPNAMES
If this bit is set, names used to identify capturing subpatterns need
not be unique. This can be helpful for certain types of pattern when it
is known that only one instance of the named subpattern can ever be
matched. There are more details of named subpatterns below; see also
the pcrepattern documentation.
PCRE_EXTENDED
If this bit is set, most white space characters in the pattern are
totally ignored except when escaped or inside a character class. How-
ever, white space is not allowed within sequences such as (?> that
introduce various parenthesized subpatterns, nor within a numerical
quantifier such as {1,3}. However, ignorable white space is permitted
between an item and a following quantifier and between a quantifier and
a following + that indicates possessiveness.
White space did not used to include the VT character (code 11), because
Perl did not treat this character as white space. However, Perl changed
at release 5.18, so PCRE followed at release 8.34, and VT is now
treated as white space.
PCRE_EXTENDED also causes characters between an unescaped # outside a
character class and the next newline, inclusive, to be ignored.
PCRE_EXTENDED is equivalent to Perl's /x option, and it can be changed
within a pattern by a (?x) option setting.
Which characters are interpreted as newlines is controlled by the
options passed to pcre_compile() or by a special sequence at the start
of the pattern, as described in the section entitled "Newline conven-
tions" in the pcrepattern documentation. Note that the end of this type
of comment is a literal newline sequence in the pattern; escape
sequences that happen to represent a newline do not count.
This option makes it possible to include comments inside complicated
patterns. Note, however, that this applies only to data characters.
White space characters may never appear within special character
sequences in a pattern, for example within the sequence (?( that intro-
duces a conditional subpattern.
PCRE_EXTRA
This option was invented in order to turn on additional functionality
of PCRE that is incompatible with Perl, but it is currently of very
little use. When set, any backslash in a pattern that is followed by a
letter that has no special meaning causes an error, thus reserving
these combinations for future expansion. By default, as in Perl, a
backslash followed by a letter with no special meaning is treated as a
literal. (Perl can, however, be persuaded to give an error for this, by
running it with the -w option.) There are at present no other features
controlled by this option. It can also be set by a (?X) option setting
within a pattern.
PCRE_FIRSTLINE
If this option is set, an unanchored pattern is required to match
before or at the first newline in the subject string, though the
matched text may continue over the newline.
PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT
If this option is set, PCRE's behaviour is changed in some ways so that
it is compatible with JavaScript rather than Perl. The changes are as
follows:
(1) A lone closing square bracket in a pattern causes a compile-time
error, because this is illegal in JavaScript (by default it is treated
as a data character). Thus, the pattern AB]CD becomes illegal when this
option is set.
(2) At run time, a back reference to an unset subpattern group matches
an empty string (by default this causes the current matching alterna-
tive to fail). A pattern such as (\1)(a) succeeds when this option is
set (assuming it can find an "a" in the subject), whereas it fails by
default, for Perl compatibility.
(3) \U matches an upper case "U" character; by default \U causes a com-
pile time error (Perl uses \U to upper case subsequent characters).
(4) \u matches a lower case "u" character unless it is followed by four
hexadecimal digits, in which case the hexadecimal number defines the
code point to match. By default, \u causes a compile time error (Perl
uses it to upper case the following character).
(5) \x matches a lower case "x" character unless it is followed by two
hexadecimal digits, in which case the hexadecimal number defines the
code point to match. By default, as in Perl, a hexadecimal number is
always expected after \x, but it may have zero, one, or two digits (so,
for example, \xz matches a binary zero character followed by z).
PCRE_MULTILINE
By default, for the purposes of matching "start of line" and "end of
line", PCRE treats the subject string as consisting of a single line of
characters, even if it actually contains newlines. The "start of line"
metacharacter (^) matches only at the start of the string, and the "end
of line" metacharacter ($) matches only at the end of the string, or
before a terminating newline (except when PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY is set).
Note, however, that unless PCRE_DOTALL is set, the "any character"
metacharacter (.) does not match at a newline. This behaviour (for ^,
$, and dot) is the same as Perl.
When PCRE_MULTILINE it is set, the "start of line" and "end of line"
constructs match immediately following or immediately before internal
newlines in the subject string, respectively, as well as at the very
start and end. This is equivalent to Perl's /m option, and it can be
changed within a pattern by a (?m) option setting. If there are no new-
lines in a subject string, or no occurrences of ^ or $ in a pattern,
setting PCRE_MULTILINE has no effect.
PCRE_NEVER_UTF
This option locks out interpretation of the pattern as UTF-8 (or UTF-16
or UTF-32 in the 16-bit and 32-bit libraries). In particular, it pre-
vents the creator of the pattern from switching to UTF interpretation
by starting the pattern with (*UTF). This may be useful in applications
that process patterns from external sources. The combination of
PCRE_UTF8 and PCRE_NEVER_UTF also causes an error.
PCRE_NEWLINE_CR
PCRE_NEWLINE_LF
PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF
PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF
PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY
These options override the default newline definition that was chosen
when PCRE was built. Setting the first or the second specifies that a
newline is indicated by a single character (CR or LF, respectively).
Setting PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF specifies that a newline is indicated by the
two-character CRLF sequence. Setting PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF specifies
that any of the three preceding sequences should be recognized. Setting
PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY specifies that any Unicode newline sequence should be
recognized.
In an ASCII/Unicode environment, the Unicode newline sequences are the
three just mentioned, plus the single characters VT (vertical tab,
U+000B), FF (form feed, U+000C), NEL (next line, U+0085), LS (line sep-
arator, U+2028), and PS (paragraph separator, U+2029). For the 8-bit
library, the last two are recognized only in UTF-8 mode.
When PCRE is compiled to run in an EBCDIC (mainframe) environment, the
code for CR is 0x0d, the same as ASCII. However, the character code for
LF is normally 0x15, though in some EBCDIC environments 0x25 is used.
Whichever of these is not LF is made to correspond to Unicode's NEL
character. EBCDIC codes are all less than 256. For more details, see
the pcrebuild documentation.
The newline setting in the options word uses three bits that are
treated as a number, giving eight possibilities. Currently only six are
used (default plus the five values above). This means that if you set
more than one newline option, the combination may or may not be sensi-
ble. For example, PCRE_NEWLINE_CR with PCRE_NEWLINE_LF is equivalent to
PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF, but other combinations may yield unused numbers and
cause an error.
The only time that a line break in a pattern is specially recognized
when compiling is when PCRE_EXTENDED is set. CR and LF are white space
characters, and so are ignored in this mode. Also, an unescaped # out-
side a character class indicates a comment that lasts until after the
next line break sequence. In other circumstances, line break sequences
in patterns are treated as literal data.
The newline option that is set at compile time becomes the default that
is used for pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec(), but it can be overridden.
PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE
If this option is set, it disables the use of numbered capturing paren-
theses in the pattern. Any opening parenthesis that is not followed by
? behaves as if it were followed by ?: but named parentheses can still
be used for capturing (and they acquire numbers in the usual way).
There is no equivalent of this option in Perl.
PCRE_NO_AUTO_POSSESS
If this option is set, it disables "auto-possessification". This is an
optimization that, for example, turns a+b into a++b in order to avoid
backtracks into a+ that can never be successful. However, if callouts
are in use, auto-possessification means that some of them are never
taken. You can set this option if you want the matching functions to do
a full unoptimized search and run all the callouts, but it is mainly
provided for testing purposes.
PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE
This is an option that acts at matching time; that is, it is really an
option for pcre_exec() or pcre_dfa_exec(). If it is set at compile
time, it is remembered with the compiled pattern and assumed at match-
ing time. This is necessary if you want to use JIT execution, because
the JIT compiler needs to know whether or not this option is set. For
details see the discussion of PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE below.
PCRE_UCP
This option changes the way PCRE processes \B, \b, \D, \d, \S, \s, \W,
\w, and some of the POSIX character classes. By default, only ASCII
characters are recognized, but if PCRE_UCP is set, Unicode properties
are used instead to classify characters. More details are given in the
section on generic character types in the pcrepattern page. If you set
PCRE_UCP, matching one of the items it affects takes much longer. The
option is available only if PCRE has been compiled with Unicode prop-
erty support.
PCRE_UNGREEDY
This option inverts the "greediness" of the quantifiers so that they
are not greedy by default, but become greedy if followed by "?". It is
not compatible with Perl. It can also be set by a (?U) option setting
within the pattern.
PCRE_UTF8
This option causes PCRE to regard both the pattern and the subject as
strings of UTF-8 characters instead of single-byte strings. However, it
is available only when PCRE is built to include UTF support. If not,
the use of this option provokes an error. Details of how this option
changes the behaviour of PCRE are given in the pcreunicode page.
PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK
When PCRE_UTF8 is set, the validity of the pattern as a UTF-8 string is
automatically checked. There is a discussion about the validity of
UTF-8 strings in the pcreunicode page. If an invalid UTF-8 sequence is
found, pcre_compile() returns an error. If you already know that your
pattern is valid, and you want to skip this check for performance rea-
sons, you can set the PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK option. When it is set, the
effect of passing an invalid UTF-8 string as a pattern is undefined. It
may cause your program to crash or loop. Note that this option can also
be passed to pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec(), to suppress the validity
checking of subject strings only. If the same string is being matched
many times, the option can be safely set for the second and subsequent
matchings to improve performance.
COMPILATION ERROR CODES
The following table lists the error codes than may be returned by
pcre_compile2(), along with the error messages that may be returned by
both compiling functions. Note that error messages are always 8-bit
ASCII strings, even in 16-bit or 32-bit mode. As PCRE has developed,
some error codes have fallen out of use. To avoid confusion, they have
not been re-used.
0 no error
1 \ at end of pattern
2 \c at end of pattern
3 unrecognized character follows \
4 numbers out of order in {} quantifier
5 number too big in {} quantifier
6 missing terminating ] for character class
7 invalid escape sequence in character class
8 range out of order in character class
9 nothing to repeat
10 [this code is not in use]
11 internal error: unexpected repeat
12 unrecognized character after (? or (?-
13 POSIX named classes are supported only within a class
14 missing )
15 reference to non-existent subpattern
16 erroffset passed as NULL
17 unknown option bit(s) set
18 missing ) after comment
19 [this code is not in use]
20 regular expression is too large
21 failed to get memory
22 unmatched parentheses
23 internal error: code overflow
24 unrecognized character after (?<
25 lookbehind assertion is not fixed length
26 malformed number or name after (?(
27 conditional group contains more than two branches
28 assertion expected after (?(
29 (?R or (?[+-]digits must be followed by )
30 unknown POSIX class name
31 POSIX collating elements are not supported
32 this version of PCRE is compiled without UTF support
33 [this code is not in use]
34 character value in \x{} or \o{} is too large
35 invalid condition (?(0)
36 \C not allowed in lookbehind assertion
37 PCRE does not support \L, \l, \N{name}, \U, or \u
38 number after (?C is > 255
39 closing ) for (?C expected
40 recursive call could loop indefinitely
41 unrecognized character after (?P
42 syntax error in subpattern name (missing terminator)
43 two named subpatterns have the same name
44 invalid UTF-8 string (specifically UTF-8)
45 support for \P, \p, and \X has not been compiled
46 malformed \P or \p sequence
47 unknown property name after \P or \p
48 subpattern name is too long (maximum 32 characters)
49 too many named subpatterns (maximum 10000)
50 [this code is not in use]
51 octal value is greater than \377 in 8-bit non-UTF-8 mode
52 internal error: overran compiling workspace
53 internal error: previously-checked referenced subpattern
not found
54 DEFINE group contains more than one branch
55 repeating a DEFINE group is not allowed
56 inconsistent NEWLINE options
57 \g is not followed by a braced, angle-bracketed, or quoted
name/number or by a plain number
58 a numbered reference must not be zero
59 an argument is not allowed for (*ACCEPT), (*FAIL), or (*COMMIT)
60 (*VERB) not recognized or malformed
61 number is too big
62 subpattern name expected
63 digit expected after (?+
64 ] is an invalid data character in JavaScript compatibility mode
65 different names for subpatterns of the same number are
not allowed
66 (*MARK) must have an argument
67 this version of PCRE is not compiled with Unicode property
support
68 \c must be followed by an ASCII character
69 \k is not followed by a braced, angle-bracketed, or quoted name
70 internal error: unknown opcode in find_fixedlength()
71 \N is not supported in a class
72 too many forward references
73 disallowed Unicode code point (>= 0xd800 && <= 0xdfff)
74 invalid UTF-16 string (specifically UTF-16)
75 name is too long in (*MARK), (*PRUNE), (*SKIP), or (*THEN)
76 character value in \u.... sequence is too large
77 invalid UTF-32 string (specifically UTF-32)
78 setting UTF is disabled by the application
79 non-hex character in \x{} (closing brace missing?)
80 non-octal character in \o{} (closing brace missing?)
81 missing opening brace after \o
82 parentheses are too deeply nested
83 invalid range in character class
84 group name must start with a non-digit
85 parentheses are too deeply nested (stack check)
The numbers 32 and 10000 in errors 48 and 49 are defaults; different
values may be used if the limits were changed when PCRE was built.
STUDYING A PATTERN
pcre_extra *pcre_study(const pcre *code, int options,
const char **errptr);
If a compiled pattern is going to be used several times, it is worth
spending more time analyzing it in order to speed up the time taken for
matching. The function pcre_study() takes a pointer to a compiled pat-
tern as its first argument. If studying the pattern produces additional
information that will help speed up matching, pcre_study() returns a
pointer to a pcre_extra block, in which the study_data field points to
the results of the study.
The returned value from pcre_study() can be passed directly to
pcre_exec() or pcre_dfa_exec(). However, a pcre_extra block also con-
tains other fields that can be set by the caller before the block is
passed; these are described below in the section on matching a pattern.
If studying the pattern does not produce any useful information,
pcre_study() returns NULL by default. In that circumstance, if the
calling program wants to pass any of the other fields to pcre_exec() or
pcre_dfa_exec(), it must set up its own pcre_extra block. However, if
pcre_study() is called with the PCRE_STUDY_EXTRA_NEEDED option, it
returns a pcre_extra block even if studying did not find any additional
information. It may still return NULL, however, if an error occurs in
pcre_study().
The second argument of pcre_study() contains option bits. There are
three further options in addition to PCRE_STUDY_EXTRA_NEEDED:
PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE
PCRE_STUDY_JIT_PARTIAL_HARD_COMPILE
PCRE_STUDY_JIT_PARTIAL_SOFT_COMPILE
If any of these are set, and the just-in-time compiler is available,
the pattern is further compiled into machine code that executes much
faster than the pcre_exec() interpretive matching function. If the
just-in-time compiler is not available, these options are ignored. All
undefined bits in the options argument must be zero.
JIT compilation is a heavyweight optimization. It can take some time
for patterns to be analyzed, and for one-off matches and simple pat-
terns the benefit of faster execution might be offset by a much slower
study time. Not all patterns can be optimized by the JIT compiler. For
those that cannot be handled, matching automatically falls back to the
pcre_exec() interpreter. For more details, see the pcrejit documenta-
tion.
The third argument for pcre_study() is a pointer for an error message.
If studying succeeds (even if no data is returned), the variable it
points to is set to NULL. Otherwise it is set to point to a textual
error message. This is a static string that is part of the library. You
must not try to free it. You should test the error pointer for NULL
after calling pcre_study(), to be sure that it has run successfully.
When you are finished with a pattern, you can free the memory used for
the study data by calling pcre_free_study(). This function was added to
the API for release 8.20. For earlier versions, the memory could be
freed with pcre_free(), just like the pattern itself. This will still
work in cases where JIT optimization is not used, but it is advisable
to change to the new function when convenient.
This is a typical way in which pcre_study() is used (except that in a
real application there should be tests for errors):
int rc;
pcre *re;
pcre_extra *sd;
re = pcre_compile("pattern", 0, &error, &erroroffset, NULL);
sd = pcre_study(
re, /* result of pcre_compile() */
0, /* no options */
&error); /* set to NULL or points to a message */
rc = pcre_exec( /* see below for details of pcre_exec() options */
re, sd, "subject", 7, 0, 0, ovector, 30);
...
pcre_free_study(sd);
pcre_free(re);
Studying a pattern does two things: first, a lower bound for the length
of subject string that is needed to match the pattern is computed. This
does not mean that there are any strings of that length that match, but
it does guarantee that no shorter strings match. The value is used to
avoid wasting time by trying to match strings that are shorter than the
lower bound. You can find out the value in a calling program via the
pcre_fullinfo() function.
Studying a pattern is also useful for non-anchored patterns that do not
have a single fixed starting character. A bitmap of possible starting
bytes is created. This speeds up finding a position in the subject at
which to start matching. (In 16-bit mode, the bitmap is used for 16-bit
values less than 256. In 32-bit mode, the bitmap is used for 32-bit
values less than 256.)
These two optimizations apply to both pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec(),
and the information is also used by the JIT compiler. The optimiza-
tions can be disabled by setting the PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE option.
You might want to do this if your pattern contains callouts or (*MARK)
and you want to make use of these facilities in cases where matching
fails.
PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE can be specified at either compile time or exe-
cution time. However, if PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE is passed to
pcre_exec(), (that is, after any JIT compilation has happened) JIT exe-
cution is disabled. For JIT execution to work with PCRE_NO_START_OPTI-
MIZE, the option must be set at compile time.
There is a longer discussion of PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE below.
LOCALE SUPPORT
PCRE handles caseless matching, and determines whether characters are
letters, digits, or whatever, by reference to a set of tables, indexed
by character code point. When running in UTF-8 mode, or in the 16- or
32-bit libraries, this applies only to characters with code points less
than 256. By default, higher-valued code points never match escapes
such as \w or \d. However, if PCRE is built with Unicode property sup-
port, all characters can be tested with \p and \P, or, alternatively,
the PCRE_UCP option can be set when a pattern is compiled; this causes
\w and friends to use Unicode property support instead of the built-in
tables.
The use of locales with Unicode is discouraged. If you are handling
characters with code points greater than 128, you should either use
Unicode support, or use locales, but not try to mix the two.
PCRE contains an internal set of tables that are used when the final
argument of pcre_compile() is NULL. These are sufficient for many
applications. Normally, the internal tables recognize only ASCII char-
acters. However, when PCRE is built, it is possible to cause the inter-
nal tables to be rebuilt in the default "C" locale of the local system,
which may cause them to be different.
The internal tables can always be overridden by tables supplied by the
application that calls PCRE. These may be created in a different locale
from the default. As more and more applications change to using Uni-
code, the need for this locale support is expected to die away.
External tables are built by calling the pcre_maketables() function,
which has no arguments, in the relevant locale. The result can then be
passed to pcre_compile() as often as necessary. For example, to build
and use tables that are appropriate for the French locale (where
accented characters with values greater than 128 are treated as let-
ters), the following code could be used:
setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "fr_FR");
tables = pcre_maketables();
re = pcre_compile(..., tables);
The locale name "fr_FR" is used on Linux and other Unix-like systems;
if you are using Windows, the name for the French locale is "french".
When pcre_maketables() runs, the tables are built in memory that is
obtained via pcre_malloc. It is the caller's responsibility to ensure
that the memory containing the tables remains available for as long as
it is needed.
The pointer that is passed to pcre_compile() is saved with the compiled
pattern, and the same tables are used via this pointer by pcre_study()
and also by pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec(). Thus, for any single pat-
tern, compilation, studying and matching all happen in the same locale,
but different patterns can be processed in different locales.
It is possible to pass a table pointer or NULL (indicating the use of
the internal tables) to pcre_exec() or pcre_dfa_exec() (see the discus-
sion below in the section on matching a pattern). This facility is pro-
vided for use with pre-compiled patterns that have been saved and
reloaded. Character tables are not saved with patterns, so if a non-
standard table was used at compile time, it must be provided again when
the reloaded pattern is matched. Attempting to use this facility to
match a pattern in a different locale from the one in which it was com-
piled is likely to lead to anomalous (usually incorrect) results.
INFORMATION ABOUT A PATTERN
int pcre_fullinfo(const pcre *code, const pcre_extra *extra,
int what, void *where);
The pcre_fullinfo() function returns information about a compiled pat-
tern. It replaces the pcre_info() function, which was removed from the
library at version 8.30, after more than 10 years of obsolescence.
The first argument for pcre_fullinfo() is a pointer to the compiled
pattern. The second argument is the result of pcre_study(), or NULL if
the pattern was not studied. The third argument specifies which piece
of information is required, and the fourth argument is a pointer to a
variable to receive the data. The yield of the function is zero for
success, or one of the following negative numbers:
PCRE_ERROR_NULL the argument code was NULL
the argument where was NULL
PCRE_ERROR_BADMAGIC the "magic number" was not found
PCRE_ERROR_BADENDIANNESS the pattern was compiled with different
endianness
PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION the value of what was invalid
PCRE_ERROR_UNSET the requested field is not set
The "magic number" is placed at the start of each compiled pattern as
an simple check against passing an arbitrary memory pointer. The endi-
anness error can occur if a compiled pattern is saved and reloaded on a
different host. Here is a typical call of pcre_fullinfo(), to obtain
the length of the compiled pattern:
int rc;
size_t length;
rc = pcre_fullinfo(
re, /* result of pcre_compile() */
sd, /* result of pcre_study(), or NULL */
PCRE_INFO_SIZE, /* what is required */
&length); /* where to put the data */
The possible values for the third argument are defined in pcre.h, and
are as follows:
PCRE_INFO_BACKREFMAX
Return the number of the highest back reference in the pattern. The
fourth argument should point to an int variable. Zero is returned if
there are no back references.
PCRE_INFO_CAPTURECOUNT
Return the number of capturing subpatterns in the pattern. The fourth
argument should point to an int variable.
PCRE_INFO_DEFAULT_TABLES
Return a pointer to the internal default character tables within PCRE.
The fourth argument should point to an unsigned char * variable. This
information call is provided for internal use by the pcre_study() func-
tion. External callers can cause PCRE to use its internal tables by
passing a NULL table pointer.
PCRE_INFO_FIRSTBYTE (deprecated)
Return information about the first data unit of any matched string, for
a non-anchored pattern. The name of this option refers to the 8-bit
library, where data units are bytes. The fourth argument should point
to an int variable. Negative values are used for special cases. How-
ever, this means that when the 32-bit library is in non-UTF-32 mode,
the full 32-bit range of characters cannot be returned. For this rea-
son, this value is deprecated; use PCRE_INFO_FIRSTCHARACTERFLAGS and
PCRE_INFO_FIRSTCHARACTER instead.
If there is a fixed first value, for example, the letter "c" from a
pattern such as (cat|cow|coyote), its value is returned. In the 8-bit
library, the value is always less than 256. In the 16-bit library the
value can be up to 0xffff. In the 32-bit library the value can be up to
0x10ffff.
If there is no fixed first value, and if either
(a) the pattern was compiled with the PCRE_MULTILINE option, and every
branch starts with "^", or
(b) every branch of the pattern starts with ".*" and PCRE_DOTALL is not
set (if it were set, the pattern would be anchored),
-1 is returned, indicating that the pattern matches only at the start
of a subject string or after any newline within the string. Otherwise
-2 is returned. For anchored patterns, -2 is returned.
PCRE_INFO_FIRSTCHARACTER
Return the value of the first data unit (non-UTF character) of any
matched string in the situation where PCRE_INFO_FIRSTCHARACTERFLAGS
returns 1; otherwise return 0. The fourth argument should point to an
uint_t variable.
In the 8-bit library, the value is always less than 256. In the 16-bit
library the value can be up to 0xffff. In the 32-bit library in UTF-32
mode the value can be up to 0x10ffff, and up to 0xffffffff when not
using UTF-32 mode.
PCRE_INFO_FIRSTCHARACTERFLAGS
Return information about the first data unit of any matched string, for
a non-anchored pattern. The fourth argument should point to an int
variable.
If there is a fixed first value, for example, the letter "c" from a
pattern such as (cat|cow|coyote), 1 is returned, and the character
value can be retrieved using PCRE_INFO_FIRSTCHARACTER. If there is no
fixed first value, and if either
(a) the pattern was compiled with the PCRE_MULTILINE option, and every
branch starts with "^", or
(b) every branch of the pattern starts with ".*" and PCRE_DOTALL is not
set (if it were set, the pattern would be anchored),
2 is returned, indicating that the pattern matches only at the start of
a subject string or after any newline within the string. Otherwise 0 is
returned. For anchored patterns, 0 is returned.
PCRE_INFO_FIRSTTABLE
If the pattern was studied, and this resulted in the construction of a
256-bit table indicating a fixed set of values for the first data unit
in any matching string, a pointer to the table is returned. Otherwise
NULL is returned. The fourth argument should point to an unsigned char
* variable.
PCRE_INFO_HASCRORLF
Return 1 if the pattern contains any explicit matches for CR or LF
characters, otherwise 0. The fourth argument should point to an int
variable. An explicit match is either a literal CR or LF character, or
\r or \n.
PCRE_INFO_JCHANGED
Return 1 if the (?J) or (?-J) option setting is used in the pattern,
otherwise 0. The fourth argument should point to an int variable. (?J)
and (?-J) set and unset the local PCRE_DUPNAMES option, respectively.
PCRE_INFO_JIT
Return 1 if the pattern was studied with one of the JIT options, and
just-in-time compiling was successful. The fourth argument should point
to an int variable. A return value of 0 means that JIT support is not
available in this version of PCRE, or that the pattern was not studied
with a JIT option, or that the JIT compiler could not handle this par-
ticular pattern. See the pcrejit documentation for details of what can
and cannot be handled.
PCRE_INFO_JITSIZE
If the pattern was successfully studied with a JIT option, return the
size of the JIT compiled code, otherwise return zero. The fourth argu-
ment should point to a size_t variable.
PCRE_INFO_LASTLITERAL
Return the value of the rightmost literal data unit that must exist in
any matched string, other than at its start, if such a value has been
recorded. The fourth argument should point to an int variable. If there
is no such value, -1 is returned. For anchored patterns, a last literal
value is recorded only if it follows something of variable length. For
example, for the pattern /^a\d+z\d+/ the returned value is "z", but for
/^a\dz\d/ the returned value is -1.
Since for the 32-bit library using the non-UTF-32 mode, this function
is unable to return the full 32-bit range of characters, this value is
deprecated; instead the PCRE_INFO_REQUIREDCHARFLAGS and
PCRE_INFO_REQUIREDCHAR values should be used.
PCRE_INFO_MATCH_EMPTY
Return 1 if the pattern can match an empty string, otherwise 0. The
fourth argument should point to an int variable.
PCRE_INFO_MATCHLIMIT
If the pattern set a match limit by including an item of the form
(*LIMIT_MATCH=nnnn) at the start, the value is returned. The fourth
argument should point to an unsigned 32-bit integer. If no such value
has been set, the call to pcre_fullinfo() returns the error
PCRE_ERROR_UNSET.
PCRE_INFO_MAXLOOKBEHIND
Return the number of characters (NB not data units) in the longest
lookbehind assertion in the pattern. This information is useful when
doing multi-segment matching using the partial matching facilities.
Note that the simple assertions \b and \B require a one-character look-
behind. \A also registers a one-character lookbehind, though it does
not actually inspect the previous character. This is to ensure that at
least one character from the old segment is retained when a new segment
is processed. Otherwise, if there are no lookbehinds in the pattern, \A
might match incorrectly at the start of a new segment.
PCRE_INFO_MINLENGTH
If the pattern was studied and a minimum length for matching subject
strings was computed, its value is returned. Otherwise the returned
value is -1. The value is a number of characters, which in UTF mode may
be different from the number of data units. The fourth argument should
point to an int variable. A non-negative value is a lower bound to the
length of any matching string. There may not be any strings of that
length that do actually match, but every string that does match is at
least that long.
PCRE_INFO_NAMECOUNT
PCRE_INFO_NAMEENTRYSIZE
PCRE_INFO_NAMETABLE
PCRE supports the use of named as well as numbered capturing parenthe-
ses. The names are just an additional way of identifying the parenthe-
ses, which still acquire numbers. Several convenience functions such as
pcre_get_named_substring() are provided for extracting captured sub-
strings by name. It is also possible to extract the data directly, by
first converting the name to a number in order to access the correct
pointers in the output vector (described with pcre_exec() below). To do
the conversion, you need to use the name-to-number map, which is
described by these three values.
The map consists of a number of fixed-size entries. PCRE_INFO_NAMECOUNT
gives the number of entries, and PCRE_INFO_NAMEENTRYSIZE gives the size
of each entry; both of these return an int value. The entry size
depends on the length of the longest name. PCRE_INFO_NAMETABLE returns
a pointer to the first entry of the table. This is a pointer to char in
the 8-bit library, where the first two bytes of each entry are the num-
ber of the capturing parenthesis, most significant byte first. In the
16-bit library, the pointer points to 16-bit data units, the first of
which contains the parenthesis number. In the 32-bit library, the
pointer points to 32-bit data units, the first of which contains the
parenthesis number. The rest of the entry is the corresponding name,
zero terminated.
The names are in alphabetical order. If (?| is used to create multiple
groups with the same number, as described in the section on duplicate
subpattern numbers in the pcrepattern page, the groups may be given the
same name, but there is only one entry in the table. Different names
for groups of the same number are not permitted. Duplicate names for
subpatterns with different numbers are permitted, but only if PCRE_DUP-
NAMES is set. They appear in the table in the order in which they were
found in the pattern. In the absence of (?| this is the order of
increasing number; when (?| is used this is not necessarily the case
because later subpatterns may have lower numbers.
As a simple example of the name/number table, consider the following
pattern after compilation by the 8-bit library (assume PCRE_EXTENDED is
set, so white space - including newlines - is ignored):
(?<date> (?<year>(\d\d)?\d\d) -
(?<month>\d\d) - (?<day>\d\d) )
There are four named subpatterns, so the table has four entries, and
each entry in the table is eight bytes long. The table is as follows,
with non-printing bytes shows in hexadecimal, and undefined bytes shown
as ??:
00 01 d a t e 00 ??
00 05 d a y 00 ?? ??
00 04 m o n t h 00
00 02 y e a r 00 ??
When writing code to extract data from named subpatterns using the
name-to-number map, remember that the length of the entries is likely
to be different for each compiled pattern.
PCRE_INFO_OKPARTIAL
Return 1 if the pattern can be used for partial matching with
pcre_exec(), otherwise 0. The fourth argument should point to an int
variable. From release 8.00, this always returns 1, because the
restrictions that previously applied to partial matching have been
lifted. The pcrepartial documentation gives details of partial match-
ing.
PCRE_INFO_OPTIONS
Return a copy of the options with which the pattern was compiled. The
fourth argument should point to an unsigned long int variable. These
option bits are those specified in the call to pcre_compile(), modified
by any top-level option settings at the start of the pattern itself. In
other words, they are the options that will be in force when matching
starts. For example, if the pattern /(?im)abc(?-i)d/ is compiled with
the PCRE_EXTENDED option, the result is PCRE_CASELESS, PCRE_MULTILINE,
and PCRE_EXTENDED.
A pattern is automatically anchored by PCRE if all of its top-level
alternatives begin with one of the following:
^ unless PCRE_MULTILINE is set
\A always
\G always
.* if PCRE_DOTALL is set and there are no back
references to the subpattern in which .* appears
For such patterns, the PCRE_ANCHORED bit is set in the options returned
by pcre_fullinfo().
PCRE_INFO_RECURSIONLIMIT
If the pattern set a recursion limit by including an item of the form
(*LIMIT_RECURSION=nnnn) at the start, the value is returned. The fourth
argument should point to an unsigned 32-bit integer. If no such value
has been set, the call to pcre_fullinfo() returns the error
PCRE_ERROR_UNSET.
PCRE_INFO_SIZE
Return the size of the compiled pattern in bytes (for all three
libraries). The fourth argument should point to a size_t variable. This
value does not include the size of the pcre structure that is returned
by pcre_compile(). The value that is passed as the argument to
pcre_malloc() when pcre_compile() is getting memory in which to place
the compiled data is the value returned by this option plus the size of
the pcre structure. Studying a compiled pattern, with or without JIT,
does not alter the value returned by this option.
PCRE_INFO_STUDYSIZE
Return the size in bytes (for all three libraries) of the data block
pointed to by the study_data field in a pcre_extra block. If pcre_extra
is NULL, or there is no study data, zero is returned. The fourth argu-
ment should point to a size_t variable. The study_data field is set by
pcre_study() to record information that will speed up matching (see the
section entitled "Studying a pattern" above). The format of the
study_data block is private, but its length is made available via this
option so that it can be saved and restored (see the pcreprecompile
documentation for details).
PCRE_INFO_REQUIREDCHARFLAGS
Returns 1 if there is a rightmost literal data unit that must exist in
any matched string, other than at its start. The fourth argument should
point to an int variable. If there is no such value, 0 is returned. If
returning 1, the character value itself can be retrieved using
PCRE_INFO_REQUIREDCHAR.
For anchored patterns, a last literal value is recorded only if it fol-
lows something of variable length. For example, for the pattern
/^a\d+z\d+/ the returned value 1 (with "z" returned from
PCRE_INFO_REQUIREDCHAR), but for /^a\dz\d/ the returned value is 0.
PCRE_INFO_REQUIREDCHAR
Return the value of the rightmost literal data unit that must exist in
any matched string, other than at its start, if such a value has been
recorded. The fourth argument should point to an uint32_t variable. If
there is no such value, 0 is returned.
REFERENCE COUNTS
int pcre_refcount(pcre *code, int adjust);
The pcre_refcount() function is used to maintain a reference count in
the data block that contains a compiled pattern. It is provided for the
benefit of applications that operate in an object-oriented manner,
where different parts of the application may be using the same compiled
pattern, but you want to free the block when they are all done.
When a pattern is compiled, the reference count field is initialized to
zero. It is changed only by calling this function, whose action is to
add the adjust value (which may be positive or negative) to it. The
yield of the function is the new value. However, the value of the count
is constrained to lie between 0 and 65535, inclusive. If the new value
is outside these limits, it is forced to the appropriate limit value.
Except when it is zero, the reference count is not correctly preserved
if a pattern is compiled on one host and then transferred to a host
whose byte-order is different. (This seems a highly unlikely scenario.)
MATCHING A PATTERN: THE TRADITIONAL FUNCTION
int pcre_exec(const pcre *code, const pcre_extra *extra,
const char *subject, int length, int startoffset,
int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize);
The function pcre_exec() is called to match a subject string against a
compiled pattern, which is passed in the code argument. If the pattern
was studied, the result of the study should be passed in the extra
argument. You can call pcre_exec() with the same code and extra argu-
ments as many times as you like, in order to match different subject
strings with the same pattern.
This function is the main matching facility of the library, and it
operates in a Perl-like manner. For specialist use there is also an
alternative matching function, which is described below in the section
about the pcre_dfa_exec() function.
In most applications, the pattern will have been compiled (and option-
ally studied) in the same process that calls pcre_exec(). However, it
is possible to save compiled patterns and study data, and then use them
later in different processes, possibly even on different hosts. For a
discussion about this, see the pcreprecompile documentation.
Here is an example of a simple call to pcre_exec():
int rc;
int ovector[30];
rc = pcre_exec(
re, /* result of pcre_compile() */
NULL, /* we didn't study the pattern */
"some string", /* the subject string */
11, /* the length of the subject string */
0, /* start at offset 0 in the subject */
0, /* default options */
ovector, /* vector of integers for substring information */
30); /* number of elements (NOT size in bytes) */
Extra data for pcre_exec()
If the extra argument is not NULL, it must point to a pcre_extra data
block. The pcre_study() function returns such a block (when it doesn't
return NULL), but you can also create one for yourself, and pass addi-
tional information in it. The pcre_extra block contains the following
fields (not necessarily in this order):
unsigned long int flags;
void *study_data;
void *executable_jit;
unsigned long int match_limit;
unsigned long int match_limit_recursion;
void *callout_data;
const unsigned char *tables;
unsigned char **mark;
In the 16-bit version of this structure, the mark field has type
"PCRE_UCHAR16 **".
In the 32-bit version of this structure, the mark field has type
"PCRE_UCHAR32 **".
The flags field is used to specify which of the other fields are set.
The flag bits are:
PCRE_EXTRA_CALLOUT_DATA
PCRE_EXTRA_EXECUTABLE_JIT
PCRE_EXTRA_MARK
PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT
PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION
PCRE_EXTRA_STUDY_DATA
PCRE_EXTRA_TABLES
Other flag bits should be set to zero. The study_data field and some-
times the executable_jit field are set in the pcre_extra block that is
returned by pcre_study(), together with the appropriate flag bits. You
should not set these yourself, but you may add to the block by setting
other fields and their corresponding flag bits.
The match_limit field provides a means of preventing PCRE from using up
a vast amount of resources when running patterns that are not going to
match, but which have a very large number of possibilities in their
search trees. The classic example is a pattern that uses nested unlim-
ited repeats.
Internally, pcre_exec() uses a function called match(), which it calls
repeatedly (sometimes recursively). The limit set by match_limit is
imposed on the number of times this function is called during a match,
which has the effect of limiting the amount of backtracking that can
take place. For patterns that are not anchored, the count restarts from
zero for each position in the subject string.
When pcre_exec() is called with a pattern that was successfully studied
with a JIT option, the way that the matching is executed is entirely
different. However, there is still the possibility of runaway matching
that goes on for a very long time, and so the match_limit value is also
used in this case (but in a different way) to limit how long the match-
ing can continue.
The default value for the limit can be set when PCRE is built; the
default default is 10 million, which handles all but the most extreme
cases. You can override the default by suppling pcre_exec() with a
pcre_extra block in which match_limit is set, and
PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT is set in the flags field. If the limit is
exceeded, pcre_exec() returns PCRE_ERROR_MATCHLIMIT.
A value for the match limit may also be supplied by an item at the
start of a pattern of the form
(*LIMIT_MATCH=d)
where d is a decimal number. However, such a setting is ignored unless
d is less than the limit set by the caller of pcre_exec() or, if no
such limit is set, less than the default.
The match_limit_recursion field is similar to match_limit, but instead
of limiting the total number of times that match() is called, it limits
the depth of recursion. The recursion depth is a smaller number than
the total number of calls, because not all calls to match() are recur-
sive. This limit is of use only if it is set smaller than match_limit.
Limiting the recursion depth limits the amount of machine stack that
can be used, or, when PCRE has been compiled to use memory on the heap
instead of the stack, the amount of heap memory that can be used. This
limit is not relevant, and is ignored, when matching is done using JIT
compiled code.
The default value for match_limit_recursion can be set when PCRE is
built; the default default is the same value as the default for
match_limit. You can override the default by suppling pcre_exec() with
a pcre_extra block in which match_limit_recursion is set, and
PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION is set in the flags field. If the
limit is exceeded, pcre_exec() returns PCRE_ERROR_RECURSIONLIMIT.
A value for the recursion limit may also be supplied by an item at the
start of a pattern of the form
(*LIMIT_RECURSION=d)
where d is a decimal number. However, such a setting is ignored unless
d is less than the limit set by the caller of pcre_exec() or, if no
such limit is set, less than the default.
The callout_data field is used in conjunction with the "callout" fea-
ture, and is described in the pcrecallout documentation.
The tables field is provided for use with patterns that have been pre-
compiled using custom character tables, saved to disc or elsewhere, and
then reloaded, because the tables that were used to compile a pattern
are not saved with it. See the pcreprecompile documentation for a dis-
cussion of saving compiled patterns for later use. If NULL is passed
using this mechanism, it forces PCRE's internal tables to be used.
Warning: The tables that pcre_exec() uses must be the same as those
that were used when the pattern was compiled. If this is not the case,
the behaviour of pcre_exec() is undefined. Therefore, when a pattern is
compiled and matched in the same process, this field should never be
set. In this (the most common) case, the correct table pointer is auto-
matically passed with the compiled pattern from pcre_compile() to
pcre_exec().
If PCRE_EXTRA_MARK is set in the flags field, the mark field must be
set to point to a suitable variable. If the pattern contains any back-
tracking control verbs such as (*MARK:NAME), and the execution ends up
with a name to pass back, a pointer to the name string (zero termi-
nated) is placed in the variable pointed to by the mark field. The
names are within the compiled pattern; if you wish to retain such a
name you must copy it before freeing the memory of a compiled pattern.
If there is no name to pass back, the variable pointed to by the mark
field is set to NULL. For details of the backtracking control verbs,
see the section entitled "Backtracking control" in the pcrepattern doc-
umentation.
Option bits for pcre_exec()
The unused bits of the options argument for pcre_exec() must be zero.
The only bits that may be set are PCRE_ANCHORED, PCRE_NEWLINE_xxx,
PCRE_NOTBOL, PCRE_NOTEOL, PCRE_NOTEMPTY, PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART,
PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE, PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK, PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD, and
PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT.
If the pattern was successfully studied with one of the just-in-time
(JIT) compile options, the only supported options for JIT execution are
PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK, PCRE_NOTBOL, PCRE_NOTEOL, PCRE_NOTEMPTY,
PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART, PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD, and PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT. If an
unsupported option is used, JIT execution is disabled and the normal
interpretive code in pcre_exec() is run.
PCRE_ANCHORED
The PCRE_ANCHORED option limits pcre_exec() to matching at the first
matching position. If a pattern was compiled with PCRE_ANCHORED, or
turned out to be anchored by virtue of its contents, it cannot be made
unachored at matching time.
PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF
PCRE_BSR_UNICODE
These options (which are mutually exclusive) control what the \R escape
sequence matches. The choice is either to match only CR, LF, or CRLF,
or to match any Unicode newline sequence. These options override the
choice that was made or defaulted when the pattern was compiled.
PCRE_NEWLINE_CR
PCRE_NEWLINE_LF
PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF
PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF
PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY
These options override the newline definition that was chosen or
defaulted when the pattern was compiled. For details, see the descrip-
tion of pcre_compile() above. During matching, the newline choice
affects the behaviour of the dot, circumflex, and dollar metacharac-
ters. It may also alter the way the match position is advanced after a
match failure for an unanchored pattern.
When PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF, PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF, or PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY is
set, and a match attempt for an unanchored pattern fails when the cur-
rent position is at a CRLF sequence, and the pattern contains no
explicit matches for CR or LF characters, the match position is
advanced by two characters instead of one, in other words, to after the
CRLF.
The above rule is a compromise that makes the most common cases work as
expected. For example, if the pattern is .+A (and the PCRE_DOTALL
option is not set), it does not match the string "\r\nA" because, after
failing at the start, it skips both the CR and the LF before retrying.
However, the pattern [\r\n]A does match that string, because it con-
tains an explicit CR or LF reference, and so advances only by one char-
acter after the first failure.
An explicit match for CR of LF is either a literal appearance of one of
those characters, or one of the \r or \n escape sequences. Implicit
matches such as [^X] do not count, nor does \s (which includes CR and
LF in the characters that it matches).
Notwithstanding the above, anomalous effects may still occur when CRLF
is a valid newline sequence and explicit \r or \n escapes appear in the
pattern.
PCRE_NOTBOL
This option specifies that first character of the subject string is not
the beginning of a line, so the circumflex metacharacter should not
match before it. Setting this without PCRE_MULTILINE (at compile time)
causes circumflex never to match. This option affects only the behav-
iour of the circumflex metacharacter. It does not affect \A.
PCRE_NOTEOL
This option specifies that the end of the subject string is not the end
of a line, so the dollar metacharacter should not match it nor (except
in multiline mode) a newline immediately before it. Setting this with-
out PCRE_MULTILINE (at compile time) causes dollar never to match. This
option affects only the behaviour of the dollar metacharacter. It does
not affect \Z or \z.
PCRE_NOTEMPTY
An empty string is not considered to be a valid match if this option is
set. If there are alternatives in the pattern, they are tried. If all
the alternatives match the empty string, the entire match fails. For
example, if the pattern
a?b?
is applied to a string not beginning with "a" or "b", it matches an
empty string at the start of the subject. With PCRE_NOTEMPTY set, this
match is not valid, so PCRE searches further into the string for occur-
rences of "a" or "b".
PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART
This is like PCRE_NOTEMPTY, except that an empty string match that is
not at the start of the subject is permitted. If the pattern is
anchored, such a match can occur only if the pattern contains \K.
Perl has no direct equivalent of PCRE_NOTEMPTY or
PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART, but it does make a special case of a pattern
match of the empty string within its split() function, and when using
the /g modifier. It is possible to emulate Perl's behaviour after
matching a null string by first trying the match again at the same off-
set with PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART and PCRE_ANCHORED, and then if that
fails, by advancing the starting offset (see below) and trying an ordi-
nary match again. There is some code that demonstrates how to do this
in the pcredemo sample program. In the most general case, you have to
check to see if the newline convention recognizes CRLF as a newline,
and if so, and the current character is CR followed by LF, advance the
starting offset by two characters instead of one.
PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE
There are a number of optimizations that pcre_exec() uses at the start
of a match, in order to speed up the process. For example, if it is
known that an unanchored match must start with a specific character, it
searches the subject for that character, and fails immediately if it
cannot find it, without actually running the main matching function.
This means that a special item such as (*COMMIT) at the start of a pat-
tern is not considered until after a suitable starting point for the
match has been found. Also, when callouts or (*MARK) items are in use,
these "start-up" optimizations can cause them to be skipped if the pat-
tern is never actually used. The start-up optimizations are in effect a
pre-scan of the subject that takes place before the pattern is run.
The PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE option disables the start-up optimizations,
possibly causing performance to suffer, but ensuring that in cases
where the result is "no match", the callouts do occur, and that items
such as (*COMMIT) and (*MARK) are considered at every possible starting
position in the subject string. If PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE is set at
compile time, it cannot be unset at matching time. The use of
PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE at matching time (that is, passing it to
pcre_exec()) disables JIT execution; in this situation, matching is
always done using interpretively.
Setting PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE can change the outcome of a matching
operation. Consider the pattern
(*COMMIT)ABC
When this is compiled, PCRE records the fact that a match must start
with the character "A". Suppose the subject string is "DEFABC". The
start-up optimization scans along the subject, finds "A" and runs the
first match attempt from there. The (*COMMIT) item means that the pat-
tern must match the current starting position, which in this case, it
does. However, if the same match is run with PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE
set, the initial scan along the subject string does not happen. The
first match attempt is run starting from "D" and when this fails,
(*COMMIT) prevents any further matches being tried, so the overall
result is "no match". If the pattern is studied, more start-up opti-
mizations may be used. For example, a minimum length for the subject
may be recorded. Consider the pattern
(*MARK:A)(X|Y)
The minimum length for a match is one character. If the subject is
"ABC", there will be attempts to match "ABC", "BC", "C", and then
finally an empty string. If the pattern is studied, the final attempt
does not take place, because PCRE knows that the subject is too short,
and so the (*MARK) is never encountered. In this case, studying the
pattern does not affect the overall match result, which is still "no
match", but it does affect the auxiliary information that is returned.
PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK
When PCRE_UTF8 is set at compile time, the validity of the subject as a
UTF-8 string is automatically checked when pcre_exec() is subsequently
called. The entire string is checked before any other processing takes
place. The value of startoffset is also checked to ensure that it
points to the start of a UTF-8 character. There is a discussion about
the validity of UTF-8 strings in the pcreunicode page. If an invalid
sequence of bytes is found, pcre_exec() returns the error
PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8 or, if PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set and the problem is a
truncated character at the end of the subject, PCRE_ERROR_SHORTUTF8. In
both cases, information about the precise nature of the error may also
be returned (see the descriptions of these errors in the section enti-
tled Error return values from pcre_exec() below). If startoffset con-
tains a value that does not point to the start of a UTF-8 character (or
to the end of the subject), PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8_OFFSET is returned.
If you already know that your subject is valid, and you want to skip
these checks for performance reasons, you can set the
PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK option when calling pcre_exec(). You might want to
do this for the second and subsequent calls to pcre_exec() if you are
making repeated calls to find all the matches in a single subject
string. However, you should be sure that the value of startoffset
points to the start of a character (or the end of the subject). When
PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK is set, the effect of passing an invalid string as a
subject or an invalid value of startoffset is undefined. Your program
may crash or loop.
PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD
PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT
These options turn on the partial matching feature. For backwards com-
patibility, PCRE_PARTIAL is a synonym for PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT. A partial
match occurs if the end of the subject string is reached successfully,
but there are not enough subject characters to complete the match. If
this happens when PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT (but not PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD) is set,
matching continues by testing any remaining alternatives. Only if no
complete match can be found is PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL returned instead of
PCRE_ERROR_NOMATCH. In other words, PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT says that the
caller is prepared to handle a partial match, but only if no complete
match can be found.
If PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set, it overrides PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT. In this
case, if a partial match is found, pcre_exec() immediately returns
PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL, without considering any other alternatives. In
other words, when PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set, a partial match is consid-
ered to be more important that an alternative complete match.
In both cases, the portion of the string that was inspected when the
partial match was found is set as the first matching string. There is a
more detailed discussion of partial and multi-segment matching, with
examples, in the pcrepartial documentation.
The string to be matched by pcre_exec()
The subject string is passed to pcre_exec() as a pointer in subject, a
length in length, and a starting offset in startoffset. The units for
length and startoffset are bytes for the 8-bit library, 16-bit data
items for the 16-bit library, and 32-bit data items for the 32-bit
library.
If startoffset is negative or greater than the length of the subject,
pcre_exec() returns PCRE_ERROR_BADOFFSET. When the starting offset is
zero, the search for a match starts at the beginning of the subject,
and this is by far the most common case. In UTF-8 or UTF-16 mode, the
offset must point to the start of a character, or the end of the sub-
ject (in UTF-32 mode, one data unit equals one character, so all off-
sets are valid). Unlike the pattern string, the subject may contain
binary zeroes.
A non-zero starting offset is useful when searching for another match
in the same subject by calling pcre_exec() again after a previous suc-
cess. Setting startoffset differs from just passing over a shortened
string and setting PCRE_NOTBOL in the case of a pattern that begins
with any kind of lookbehind. For example, consider the pattern
\Biss\B
which finds occurrences of "iss" in the middle of words. (\B matches
only if the current position in the subject is not a word boundary.)
When applied to the string "Mississipi" the first call to pcre_exec()
finds the first occurrence. If pcre_exec() is called again with just
the remainder of the subject, namely "issipi", it does not match,
because \B is always false at the start of the subject, which is deemed
to be a word boundary. However, if pcre_exec() is passed the entire
string again, but with startoffset set to 4, it finds the second occur-
rence of "iss" because it is able to look behind the starting point to
discover that it is preceded by a letter.
Finding all the matches in a subject is tricky when the pattern can
match an empty string. It is possible to emulate Perl's /g behaviour by
first trying the match again at the same offset, with the
PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART and PCRE_ANCHORED options, and then if that
fails, advancing the starting offset and trying an ordinary match
again. There is some code that demonstrates how to do this in the pcre-
demo sample program. In the most general case, you have to check to see
if the newline convention recognizes CRLF as a newline, and if so, and
the current character is CR followed by LF, advance the starting offset
by two characters instead of one.
If a non-zero starting offset is passed when the pattern is anchored,
one attempt to match at the given offset is made. This can only succeed
if the pattern does not require the match to be at the start of the
subject.
How pcre_exec() returns captured substrings
In general, a pattern matches a certain portion of the subject, and in
addition, further substrings from the subject may be picked out by
parts of the pattern. Following the usage in Jeffrey Friedl's book,
this is called "capturing" in what follows, and the phrase "capturing
subpattern" is used for a fragment of a pattern that picks out a sub-
string. PCRE supports several other kinds of parenthesized subpattern
that do not cause substrings to be captured.
Captured substrings are returned to the caller via a vector of integers
whose address is passed in ovector. The number of elements in the vec-
tor is passed in ovecsize, which must be a non-negative number. Note:
this argument is NOT the size of ovector in bytes.
The first two-thirds of the vector is used to pass back captured sub-
strings, each substring using a pair of integers. The remaining third
of the vector is used as workspace by pcre_exec() while matching cap-
turing subpatterns, and is not available for passing back information.
The number passed in ovecsize should always be a multiple of three. If
it is not, it is rounded down.
When a match is successful, information about captured substrings is
returned in pairs of integers, starting at the beginning of ovector,
and continuing up to two-thirds of its length at the most. The first
element of each pair is set to the offset of the first character in a
substring, and the second is set to the offset of the first character
after the end of a substring. These values are always data unit off-
sets, even in UTF mode. They are byte offsets in the 8-bit library,
16-bit data item offsets in the 16-bit library, and 32-bit data item
offsets in the 32-bit library. Note: they are not character counts.
The first pair of integers, ovector[0] and ovector[1], identify the
portion of the subject string matched by the entire pattern. The next
pair is used for the first capturing subpattern, and so on. The value
returned by pcre_exec() is one more than the highest numbered pair that
has been set. For example, if two substrings have been captured, the
returned value is 3. If there are no capturing subpatterns, the return
value from a successful match is 1, indicating that just the first pair
of offsets has been set.
If a capturing subpattern is matched repeatedly, it is the last portion
of the string that it matched that is returned.
If the vector is too small to hold all the captured substring offsets,
it is used as far as possible (up to two-thirds of its length), and the
function returns a value of zero. If neither the actual string matched
nor any captured substrings are of interest, pcre_exec() may be called
with ovector passed as NULL and ovecsize as zero. However, if the pat-
tern contains back references and the ovector is not big enough to
remember the related substrings, PCRE has to get additional memory for
use during matching. Thus it is usually advisable to supply an ovector
of reasonable size.
There are some cases where zero is returned (indicating vector over-
flow) when in fact the vector is exactly the right size for the final
match. For example, consider the pattern
(a)(?:(b)c|bd)
If a vector of 6 elements (allowing for only 1 captured substring) is
given with subject string "abd", pcre_exec() will try to set the second
captured string, thereby recording a vector overflow, before failing to
match "c" and backing up to try the second alternative. The zero
return, however, does correctly indicate that the maximum number of
slots (namely 2) have been filled. In similar cases where there is tem-
porary overflow, but the final number of used slots is actually less
than the maximum, a non-zero value is returned.
The pcre_fullinfo() function can be used to find out how many capturing
subpatterns there are in a compiled pattern. The smallest size for
ovector that will allow for n captured substrings, in addition to the
offsets of the substring matched by the whole pattern, is (n+1)*3.
It is possible for capturing subpattern number n+1 to match some part
of the subject when subpattern n has not been used at all. For example,
if the string "abc" is matched against the pattern (a|(z))(bc) the
return from the function is 4, and subpatterns 1 and 3 are matched, but
2 is not. When this happens, both values in the offset pairs corre-
sponding to unused subpatterns are set to -1.
Offset values that correspond to unused subpatterns at the end of the
expression are also set to -1. For example, if the string "abc" is
matched against the pattern (abc)(x(yz)?)? subpatterns 2 and 3 are not
matched. The return from the function is 2, because the highest used
capturing subpattern number is 1, and the offsets for for the second
and third capturing subpatterns (assuming the vector is large enough,
of course) are set to -1.
Note: Elements in the first two-thirds of ovector that do not corre-
spond to capturing parentheses in the pattern are never changed. That
is, if a pattern contains n capturing parentheses, no more than ovec-
tor[0] to ovector[2n+1] are set by pcre_exec(). The other elements (in
the first two-thirds) retain whatever values they previously had.
Some convenience functions are provided for extracting the captured
substrings as separate strings. These are described below.
Error return values from pcre_exec()
If pcre_exec() fails, it returns a negative number. The following are
defined in the header file:
PCRE_ERROR_NOMATCH (-1)
The subject string did not match the pattern.
PCRE_ERROR_NULL (-2)
Either code or subject was passed as NULL, or ovector was NULL and
ovecsize was not zero.
PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION (-3)
An unrecognized bit was set in the options argument.
PCRE_ERROR_BADMAGIC (-4)
PCRE stores a 4-byte "magic number" at the start of the compiled code,
to catch the case when it is passed a junk pointer and to detect when a
pattern that was compiled in an environment of one endianness is run in
an environment with the other endianness. This is the error that PCRE
gives when the magic number is not present.
PCRE_ERROR_UNKNOWN_OPCODE (-5)
While running the pattern match, an unknown item was encountered in the
compiled pattern. This error could be caused by a bug in PCRE or by
overwriting of the compiled pattern.
PCRE_ERROR_NOMEMORY (-6)
If a pattern contains back references, but the ovector that is passed
to pcre_exec() is not big enough to remember the referenced substrings,
PCRE gets a block of memory at the start of matching to use for this
purpose. If the call via pcre_malloc() fails, this error is given. The
memory is automatically freed at the end of matching.
This error is also given if pcre_stack_malloc() fails in pcre_exec().
This can happen only when PCRE has been compiled with --disable-stack-
for-recursion.
PCRE_ERROR_NOSUBSTRING (-7)
This error is used by the pcre_copy_substring(), pcre_get_substring(),
and pcre_get_substring_list() functions (see below). It is never
returned by pcre_exec().
PCRE_ERROR_MATCHLIMIT (-8)
The backtracking limit, as specified by the match_limit field in a
pcre_extra structure (or defaulted) was reached. See the description
above.
PCRE_ERROR_CALLOUT (-9)
This error is never generated by pcre_exec() itself. It is provided for
use by callout functions that want to yield a distinctive error code.
See the pcrecallout documentation for details.
PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8 (-10)
A string that contains an invalid UTF-8 byte sequence was passed as a
subject, and the PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK option was not set. If the size of
the output vector (ovecsize) is at least 2, the byte offset to the
start of the the invalid UTF-8 character is placed in the first ele-
ment, and a reason code is placed in the second element. The reason
codes are listed in the following section. For backward compatibility,
if PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set and the problem is a truncated UTF-8 char-
acter at the end of the subject (reason codes 1 to 5),
PCRE_ERROR_SHORTUTF8 is returned instead of PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8.
PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8_OFFSET (-11)
The UTF-8 byte sequence that was passed as a subject was checked and
found to be valid (the PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK option was not set), but the
value of startoffset did not point to the beginning of a UTF-8 charac-
ter or the end of the subject.
PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL (-12)
The subject string did not match, but it did match partially. See the
pcrepartial documentation for details of partial matching.
PCRE_ERROR_BADPARTIAL (-13)
This code is no longer in use. It was formerly returned when the
PCRE_PARTIAL option was used with a compiled pattern containing items
that were not supported for partial matching. From release 8.00
onwards, there are no restrictions on partial matching.
PCRE_ERROR_INTERNAL (-14)
An unexpected internal error has occurred. This error could be caused
by a bug in PCRE or by overwriting of the compiled pattern.
PCRE_ERROR_BADCOUNT (-15)
This error is given if the value of the ovecsize argument is negative.
PCRE_ERROR_RECURSIONLIMIT (-21)
The internal recursion limit, as specified by the match_limit_recursion
field in a pcre_extra structure (or defaulted) was reached. See the
description above.
PCRE_ERROR_BADNEWLINE (-23)
An invalid combination of PCRE_NEWLINE_xxx options was given.
PCRE_ERROR_BADOFFSET (-24)
The value of startoffset was negative or greater than the length of the
subject, that is, the value in length.
PCRE_ERROR_SHORTUTF8 (-25)
This error is returned instead of PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8 when the subject
string ends with a truncated UTF-8 character and the PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD
option is set. Information about the failure is returned as for
PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8. It is in fact sufficient to detect this case, but
this special error code for PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD precedes the implementa-
tion of returned information; it is retained for backwards compatibil-
ity.
PCRE_ERROR_RECURSELOOP (-26)
This error is returned when pcre_exec() detects a recursion loop within
the pattern. Specifically, it means that either the whole pattern or a
subpattern has been called recursively for the second time at the same
position in the subject string. Some simple patterns that might do this
are detected and faulted at compile time, but more complicated cases,
in particular mutual recursions between two different subpatterns, can-
not be detected until run time.
PCRE_ERROR_JIT_STACKLIMIT (-27)
This error is returned when a pattern that was successfully studied
using a JIT compile option is being matched, but the memory available
for the just-in-time processing stack is not large enough. See the
pcrejit documentation for more details.
PCRE_ERROR_BADMODE (-28)
This error is given if a pattern that was compiled by the 8-bit library
is passed to a 16-bit or 32-bit library function, or vice versa.
PCRE_ERROR_BADENDIANNESS (-29)
This error is given if a pattern that was compiled and saved is
reloaded on a host with different endianness. The utility function
pcre_pattern_to_host_byte_order() can be used to convert such a pattern
so that it runs on the new host.
PCRE_ERROR_JIT_BADOPTION
This error is returned when a pattern that was successfully studied
using a JIT compile option is being matched, but the matching mode
(partial or complete match) does not correspond to any JIT compilation
mode. When the JIT fast path function is used, this error may be also
given for invalid options. See the pcrejit documentation for more
details.
PCRE_ERROR_BADLENGTH (-32)
This error is given if pcre_exec() is called with a negative value for
the length argument.
Error numbers -16 to -20, -22, and 30 are not used by pcre_exec().
Reason codes for invalid UTF-8 strings
This section applies only to the 8-bit library. The corresponding
information for the 16-bit and 32-bit libraries is given in the pcre16
and pcre32 pages.
When pcre_exec() returns either PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8 or PCRE_ERROR_SHORT-
UTF8, and the size of the output vector (ovecsize) is at least 2, the
offset of the start of the invalid UTF-8 character is placed in the
first output vector element (ovector[0]) and a reason code is placed in
the second element (ovector[1]). The reason codes are given names in
the pcre.h header file:
PCRE_UTF8_ERR1
PCRE_UTF8_ERR2
PCRE_UTF8_ERR3
PCRE_UTF8_ERR4
PCRE_UTF8_ERR5
The string ends with a truncated UTF-8 character; the code specifies
how many bytes are missing (1 to 5). Although RFC 3629 restricts UTF-8
characters to be no longer than 4 bytes, the encoding scheme (origi-
nally defined by RFC 2279) allows for up to 6 bytes, and this is
checked first; hence the possibility of 4 or 5 missing bytes.
PCRE_UTF8_ERR6
PCRE_UTF8_ERR7
PCRE_UTF8_ERR8
PCRE_UTF8_ERR9
PCRE_UTF8_ERR10
The two most significant bits of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th byte of
the character do not have the binary value 0b10 (that is, either the
most significant bit is 0, or the next bit is 1).
PCRE_UTF8_ERR11
PCRE_UTF8_ERR12
A character that is valid by the RFC 2279 rules is either 5 or 6 bytes
long; these code points are excluded by RFC 3629.
PCRE_UTF8_ERR13
A 4-byte character has a value greater than 0x10fff; these code points
are excluded by RFC 3629.
PCRE_UTF8_ERR14
A 3-byte character has a value in the range 0xd800 to 0xdfff; this
range of code points are reserved by RFC 3629 for use with UTF-16, and
so are excluded from UTF-8.
PCRE_UTF8_ERR15
PCRE_UTF8_ERR16
PCRE_UTF8_ERR17
PCRE_UTF8_ERR18
PCRE_UTF8_ERR19
A 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, or 6-byte character is "overlong", that is, it codes
for a value that can be represented by fewer bytes, which is invalid.
For example, the two bytes 0xc0, 0xae give the value 0x2e, whose cor-
rect coding uses just one byte.
PCRE_UTF8_ERR20
The two most significant bits of the first byte of a character have the
binary value 0b10 (that is, the most significant bit is 1 and the sec-
ond is 0). Such a byte can only validly occur as the second or subse-
quent byte of a multi-byte character.
PCRE_UTF8_ERR21
The first byte of a character has the value 0xfe or 0xff. These values
can never occur in a valid UTF-8 string.
PCRE_UTF8_ERR22
This error code was formerly used when the presence of a so-called
"non-character" caused an error. Unicode corrigendum #9 makes it clear
that such characters should not cause a string to be rejected, and so
this code is no longer in use and is never returned.
EXTRACTING CAPTURED SUBSTRINGS BY NUMBER
int pcre_copy_substring(const char *subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, int stringnumber, char *buffer,
int buffersize);
int pcre_get_substring(const char *subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, int stringnumber,
const char **stringptr);
int pcre_get_substring_list(const char *subject,
int *ovector, int stringcount, const char ***listptr);
Captured substrings can be accessed directly by using the offsets
returned by pcre_exec() in ovector. For convenience, the functions
pcre_copy_substring(), pcre_get_substring(), and pcre_get_sub-
string_list() are provided for extracting captured substrings as new,
separate, zero-terminated strings. These functions identify substrings
by number. The next section describes functions for extracting named
substrings.
A substring that contains a binary zero is correctly extracted and has
a further zero added on the end, but the result is not, of course, a C
string. However, you can process such a string by referring to the
length that is returned by pcre_copy_substring() and pcre_get_sub-
string(). Unfortunately, the interface to pcre_get_substring_list() is
not adequate for handling strings containing binary zeros, because the
end of the final string is not independently indicated.
The first three arguments are the same for all three of these func-
tions: subject is the subject string that has just been successfully
matched, ovector is a pointer to the vector of integer offsets that was
passed to pcre_exec(), and stringcount is the number of substrings that
were captured by the match, including the substring that matched the
entire regular expression. This is the value returned by pcre_exec() if
it is greater than zero. If pcre_exec() returned zero, indicating that
it ran out of space in ovector, the value passed as stringcount should
be the number of elements in the vector divided by three.
The functions pcre_copy_substring() and pcre_get_substring() extract a
single substring, whose number is given as stringnumber. A value of
zero extracts the substring that matched the entire pattern, whereas
higher values extract the captured substrings. For pcre_copy_sub-
string(), the string is placed in buffer, whose length is given by
buffersize, while for pcre_get_substring() a new block of memory is
obtained via pcre_malloc, and its address is returned via stringptr.
The yield of the function is the length of the string, not including
the terminating zero, or one of these error codes:
PCRE_ERROR_NOMEMORY (-6)
The buffer was too small for pcre_copy_substring(), or the attempt to
get memory failed for pcre_get_substring().
PCRE_ERROR_NOSUBSTRING (-7)
There is no substring whose number is stringnumber.
The pcre_get_substring_list() function extracts all available sub-
strings and builds a list of pointers to them. All this is done in a
single block of memory that is obtained via pcre_malloc. The address of
the memory block is returned via listptr, which is also the start of
the list of string pointers. The end of the list is marked by a NULL
pointer. The yield of the function is zero if all went well, or the
error code
PCRE_ERROR_NOMEMORY (-6)
if the attempt to get the memory block failed.
When any of these functions encounter a substring that is unset, which
can happen when capturing subpattern number n+1 matches some part of
the subject, but subpattern n has not been used at all, they return an
empty string. This can be distinguished from a genuine zero-length sub-
string by inspecting the appropriate offset in ovector, which is nega-
tive for unset substrings.
The two convenience functions pcre_free_substring() and pcre_free_sub-
string_list() can be used to free the memory returned by a previous
call of pcre_get_substring() or pcre_get_substring_list(), respec-
tively. They do nothing more than call the function pointed to by
pcre_free, which of course could be called directly from a C program.
However, PCRE is used in some situations where it is linked via a spe-
cial interface to another programming language that cannot use
pcre_free directly; it is for these cases that the functions are pro-
vided.
EXTRACTING CAPTURED SUBSTRINGS BY NAME
int pcre_get_stringnumber(const pcre *code,
const char *name);
int pcre_copy_named_substring(const pcre *code,
const char *subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, const char *stringname,
char *buffer, int buffersize);
int pcre_get_named_substring(const pcre *code,
const char *subject, int *ovector,
int stringcount, const char *stringname,
const char **stringptr);
To extract a substring by name, you first have to find associated num-
ber. For example, for this pattern
(a+)b(?<xxx>\d+)...
the number of the subpattern called "xxx" is 2. If the name is known to
be unique (PCRE_DUPNAMES was not set), you can find the number from the
name by calling pcre_get_stringnumber(). The first argument is the com-
piled pattern, and the second is the name. The yield of the function is
the subpattern number, or PCRE_ERROR_NOSUBSTRING (-7) if there is no
subpattern of that name.
Given the number, you can extract the substring directly, or use one of
the functions described in the previous section. For convenience, there
are also two functions that do the whole job.
Most of the arguments of pcre_copy_named_substring() and
pcre_get_named_substring() are the same as those for the similarly
named functions that extract by number. As these are described in the
previous section, they are not re-described here. There are just two
differences:
First, instead of a substring number, a substring name is given. Sec-
ond, there is an extra argument, given at the start, which is a pointer
to the compiled pattern. This is needed in order to gain access to the
name-to-number translation table.
These functions call pcre_get_stringnumber(), and if it succeeds, they
then call pcre_copy_substring() or pcre_get_substring(), as appropri-
ate. NOTE: If PCRE_DUPNAMES is set and there are duplicate names, the
behaviour may not be what you want (see the next section).
Warning: If the pattern uses the (?| feature to set up multiple subpat-
terns with the same number, as described in the section on duplicate
subpattern numbers in the pcrepattern page, you cannot use names to
distinguish the different subpatterns, because names are not included
in the compiled code. The matching process uses only numbers. For this
reason, the use of different names for subpatterns of the same number
causes an error at compile time.
DUPLICATE SUBPATTERN NAMES
int pcre_get_stringtable_entries(const pcre *code,
const char *name, char **first, char **last);
When a pattern is compiled with the PCRE_DUPNAMES option, names for
subpatterns are not required to be unique. (Duplicate names are always
allowed for subpatterns with the same number, created by using the (?|
feature. Indeed, if such subpatterns are named, they are required to
use the same names.)
Normally, patterns with duplicate names are such that in any one match,
only one of the named subpatterns participates. An example is shown in
the pcrepattern documentation.
When duplicates are present, pcre_copy_named_substring() and
pcre_get_named_substring() return the first substring corresponding to
the given name that is set. If none are set, PCRE_ERROR_NOSUBSTRING
(-7) is returned; no data is returned. The pcre_get_stringnumber()
function returns one of the numbers that are associated with the name,
but it is not defined which it is.
If you want to get full details of all captured substrings for a given
name, you must use the pcre_get_stringtable_entries() function. The
first argument is the compiled pattern, and the second is the name. The
third and fourth are pointers to variables which are updated by the
function. After it has run, they point to the first and last entries in
the name-to-number table for the given name. The function itself
returns the length of each entry, or PCRE_ERROR_NOSUBSTRING (-7) if
there are none. The format of the table is described above in the sec-
tion entitled Information about a pattern above. Given all the rele-
vant entries for the name, you can extract each of their numbers, and
hence the captured data, if any.
FINDING ALL POSSIBLE MATCHES
The traditional matching function uses a similar algorithm to Perl,
which stops when it finds the first match, starting at a given point in
the subject. If you want to find all possible matches, or the longest
possible match, consider using the alternative matching function (see
below) instead. If you cannot use the alternative function, but still
need to find all possible matches, you can kludge it up by making use
of the callout facility, which is described in the pcrecallout documen-
tation.
What you have to do is to insert a callout right at the end of the pat-
tern. When your callout function is called, extract and save the cur-
rent matched substring. Then return 1, which forces pcre_exec() to
backtrack and try other alternatives. Ultimately, when it runs out of
matches, pcre_exec() will yield PCRE_ERROR_NOMATCH.
OBTAINING AN ESTIMATE OF STACK USAGE
Matching certain patterns using pcre_exec() can use a lot of process
stack, which in certain environments can be rather limited in size.
Some users find it helpful to have an estimate of the amount of stack
that is used by pcre_exec(), to help them set recursion limits, as
described in the pcrestack documentation. The estimate that is output
by pcretest when called with the -m and -C options is obtained by call-
ing pcre_exec with the values NULL, NULL, NULL, -999, and -999 for its
first five arguments.
Normally, if its first argument is NULL, pcre_exec() immediately
returns the negative error code PCRE_ERROR_NULL, but with this special
combination of arguments, it returns instead a negative number whose
absolute value is the approximate stack frame size in bytes. (A nega-
tive number is used so that it is clear that no match has happened.)
The value is approximate because in some cases, recursive calls to
pcre_exec() occur when there are one or two additional variables on the
stack.
If PCRE has been compiled to use the heap instead of the stack for
recursion, the value returned is the size of each block that is
obtained from the heap.
MATCHING A PATTERN: THE ALTERNATIVE FUNCTION
int pcre_dfa_exec(const pcre *code, const pcre_extra *extra,
const char *subject, int length, int startoffset,
int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize,
int *workspace, int wscount);
The function pcre_dfa_exec() is called to match a subject string
against a compiled pattern, using a matching algorithm that scans the
subject string just once, and does not backtrack. This has different
characteristics to the normal algorithm, and is not compatible with
Perl. Some of the features of PCRE patterns are not supported. Never-
theless, there are times when this kind of matching can be useful. For
a discussion of the two matching algorithms, and a list of features
that pcre_dfa_exec() does not support, see the pcrematching documenta-
tion.
The arguments for the pcre_dfa_exec() function are the same as for
pcre_exec(), plus two extras. The ovector argument is used in a differ-
ent way, and this is described below. The other common arguments are
used in the same way as for pcre_exec(), so their description is not
repeated here.
The two additional arguments provide workspace for the function. The
workspace vector should contain at least 20 elements. It is used for
keeping track of multiple paths through the pattern tree. More
workspace will be needed for patterns and subjects where there are a
lot of potential matches.
Here is an example of a simple call to pcre_dfa_exec():
int rc;
int ovector[10];
int wspace[20];
rc = pcre_dfa_exec(
re, /* result of pcre_compile() */
NULL, /* we didn't study the pattern */
"some string", /* the subject string */
11, /* the length of the subject string */
0, /* start at offset 0 in the subject */
0, /* default options */
ovector, /* vector of integers for substring information */
10, /* number of elements (NOT size in bytes) */
wspace, /* working space vector */
20); /* number of elements (NOT size in bytes) */
Option bits for pcre_dfa_exec()
The unused bits of the options argument for pcre_dfa_exec() must be
zero. The only bits that may be set are PCRE_ANCHORED, PCRE_NEW-
LINE_xxx, PCRE_NOTBOL, PCRE_NOTEOL, PCRE_NOTEMPTY,
PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART, PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK, PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF,
PCRE_BSR_UNICODE, PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE, PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD, PCRE_PAR-
TIAL_SOFT, PCRE_DFA_SHORTEST, and PCRE_DFA_RESTART. All but the last
four of these are exactly the same as for pcre_exec(), so their
description is not repeated here.
PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD
PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT
These have the same general effect as they do for pcre_exec(), but the
details are slightly different. When PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set for
pcre_dfa_exec(), it returns PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL if the end of the sub-
ject is reached and there is still at least one matching possibility
that requires additional characters. This happens even if some complete
matches have also been found. When PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT is set, the return
code PCRE_ERROR_NOMATCH is converted into PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL if the end
of the subject is reached, there have been no complete matches, but
there is still at least one matching possibility. The portion of the
string that was inspected when the longest partial match was found is
set as the first matching string in both cases. There is a more
detailed discussion of partial and multi-segment matching, with exam-
ples, in the pcrepartial documentation.
PCRE_DFA_SHORTEST
Setting the PCRE_DFA_SHORTEST option causes the matching algorithm to
stop as soon as it has found one match. Because of the way the alterna-
tive algorithm works, this is necessarily the shortest possible match
at the first possible matching point in the subject string.
PCRE_DFA_RESTART
When pcre_dfa_exec() returns a partial match, it is possible to call it
again, with additional subject characters, and have it continue with
the same match. The PCRE_DFA_RESTART option requests this action; when
it is set, the workspace and wscount options must reference the same
vector as before because data about the match so far is left in them
after a partial match. There is more discussion of this facility in the
pcrepartial documentation.
Successful returns from pcre_dfa_exec()
When pcre_dfa_exec() succeeds, it may have matched more than one sub-
string in the subject. Note, however, that all the matches from one run
of the function start at the same point in the subject. The shorter
matches are all initial substrings of the longer matches. For example,
if the pattern
<.*>
is matched against the string
This is <something> <something else> <something further> no more
the three matched strings are
<something>
<something> <something else>
<something> <something else> <something further>
On success, the yield of the function is a number greater than zero,
which is the number of matched substrings. The substrings themselves
are returned in ovector. Each string uses two elements; the first is
the offset to the start, and the second is the offset to the end. In
fact, all the strings have the same start offset. (Space could have
been saved by giving this only once, but it was decided to retain some
compatibility with the way pcre_exec() returns data, even though the
meaning of the strings is different.)
The strings are returned in reverse order of length; that is, the long-
est matching string is given first. If there were too many matches to
fit into ovector, the yield of the function is zero, and the vector is
filled with the longest matches. Unlike pcre_exec(), pcre_dfa_exec()
can use the entire ovector for returning matched strings.
NOTE: PCRE's "auto-possessification" optimization usually applies to
character repeats at the end of a pattern (as well as internally). For
example, the pattern "a\d+" is compiled as if it were "a\d++" because
there is no point even considering the possibility of backtracking into
the repeated digits. For DFA matching, this means that only one possi-
ble match is found. If you really do want multiple matches in such
cases, either use an ungreedy repeat ("a\d+?") or set the
PCRE_NO_AUTO_POSSESS option when compiling.
Error returns from pcre_dfa_exec()
The pcre_dfa_exec() function returns a negative number when it fails.
Many of the errors are the same as for pcre_exec(), and these are
described above. There are in addition the following errors that are
specific to pcre_dfa_exec():
PCRE_ERROR_DFA_UITEM (-16)
This return is given if pcre_dfa_exec() encounters an item in the pat-
tern that it does not support, for instance, the use of \C or a back
reference.
PCRE_ERROR_DFA_UCOND (-17)
This return is given if pcre_dfa_exec() encounters a condition item
that uses a back reference for the condition, or a test for recursion
in a specific group. These are not supported.
PCRE_ERROR_DFA_UMLIMIT (-18)
This return is given if pcre_dfa_exec() is called with an extra block
that contains a setting of the match_limit or match_limit_recursion
fields. This is not supported (these fields are meaningless for DFA
matching).
PCRE_ERROR_DFA_WSSIZE (-19)
This return is given if pcre_dfa_exec() runs out of space in the
workspace vector.
PCRE_ERROR_DFA_RECURSE (-20)
When a recursive subpattern is processed, the matching function calls
itself recursively, using private vectors for ovector and workspace.
This error is given if the output vector is not large enough. This
should be extremely rare, as a vector of size 1000 is used.
PCRE_ERROR_DFA_BADRESTART (-30)
When pcre_dfa_exec() is called with the PCRE_DFA_RESTART option, some
plausibility checks are made on the contents of the workspace, which
should contain data about the previous partial match. If any of these
checks fail, this error is given.
SEE ALSO
pcre16(3), pcre32(3), pcrebuild(3), pcrecallout(3), pcrecpp(3)(3),
pcrematching(3), pcrepartial(3), pcreposix(3), pcreprecompile(3), pcre-
sample(3), pcrestack(3).
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 18 December 2015
Copyright (c) 1997-2015 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCRECALLOUT(3) Library Functions Manual PCRECALLOUT(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
SYNOPSIS
#include <pcre.h>
int (*pcre_callout)(pcre_callout_block *);
int (*pcre16_callout)(pcre16_callout_block *);
int (*pcre32_callout)(pcre32_callout_block *);
DESCRIPTION
PCRE provides a feature called "callout", which is a means of temporar-
ily passing control to the caller of PCRE in the middle of pattern
matching. The caller of PCRE provides an external function by putting
its entry point in the global variable pcre_callout (pcre16_callout for
the 16-bit library, pcre32_callout for the 32-bit library). By default,
this variable contains NULL, which disables all calling out.
Within a regular expression, (?C) indicates the points at which the
external function is to be called. Different callout points can be
identified by putting a number less than 256 after the letter C. The
default value is zero. For example, this pattern has two callout
points:
(?C1)abc(?C2)def
If the PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT option bit is set when a pattern is compiled,
PCRE automatically inserts callouts, all with number 255, before each
item in the pattern. For example, if PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT is used with the
pattern
A(\d{2}|--)
it is processed as if it were
(?C255)A(?C255)((?C255)\d{2}(?C255)|(?C255)-(?C255)-(?C255))(?C255)
Notice that there is a callout before and after each parenthesis and
alternation bar. If the pattern contains a conditional group whose con-
dition is an assertion, an automatic callout is inserted immediately
before the condition. Such a callout may also be inserted explicitly,
for example:
(?(?C9)(?=a)ab|de)
This applies only to assertion conditions (because they are themselves
independent groups).
Automatic callouts can be used for tracking the progress of pattern
matching. The pcretest program has a pattern qualifier (/C) that sets
automatic callouts; when it is used, the output indicates how the pat-
tern is being matched. This is useful information when you are trying
to optimize the performance of a particular pattern.
MISSING CALLOUTS
You should be aware that, because of optimizations in the way PCRE com-
piles and matches patterns, callouts sometimes do not happen exactly as
you might expect.
At compile time, PCRE "auto-possessifies" repeated items when it knows
that what follows cannot be part of the repeat. For example, a+[bc] is
compiled as if it were a++[bc]. The pcretest output when this pattern
is anchored and then applied with automatic callouts to the string
"aaaa" is:
--->aaaa
+0 ^ ^
+1 ^ a+
+3 ^ ^ [bc]
No match
This indicates that when matching [bc] fails, there is no backtracking
into a+ and therefore the callouts that would be taken for the back-
tracks do not occur. You can disable the auto-possessify feature by
passing PCRE_NO_AUTO_POSSESS to pcre_compile(), or starting the pattern
with (*NO_AUTO_POSSESS). If this is done in pcretest (using the /O
qualifier), the output changes to this:
--->aaaa
+0 ^ ^
+1 ^ a+
+3 ^ ^ [bc]
+3 ^ ^ [bc]
+3 ^ ^ [bc]
+3 ^^ [bc]
No match
This time, when matching [bc] fails, the matcher backtracks into a+ and
tries again, repeatedly, until a+ itself fails.
Other optimizations that provide fast "no match" results also affect
callouts. For example, if the pattern is
ab(?C4)cd
PCRE knows that any matching string must contain the letter "d". If the
subject string is "abyz", the lack of "d" means that matching doesn't
ever start, and the callout is never reached. However, with "abyd",
though the result is still no match, the callout is obeyed.
If the pattern is studied, PCRE knows the minimum length of a matching
string, and will immediately give a "no match" return without actually
running a match if the subject is not long enough, or, for unanchored
patterns, if it has been scanned far enough.
You can disable these optimizations by passing the PCRE_NO_START_OPTI-
MIZE option to the matching function, or by starting the pattern with
(*NO_START_OPT). This slows down the matching process, but does ensure
that callouts such as the example above are obeyed.
THE CALLOUT INTERFACE
During matching, when PCRE reaches a callout point, the external func-
tion defined by pcre_callout or pcre[16|32]_callout is called (if it is
set). This applies to both normal and DFA matching. The only argument
to the callout function is a pointer to a pcre_callout or
pcre[16|32]_callout block. These structures contains the following
fields:
int version;
int callout_number;
int *offset_vector;
const char *subject; (8-bit version)
PCRE_SPTR16 subject; (16-bit version)
PCRE_SPTR32 subject; (32-bit version)
int subject_length;
int start_match;
int current_position;
int capture_top;
int capture_last;
void *callout_data;
int pattern_position;
int next_item_length;
const unsigned char *mark; (8-bit version)
const PCRE_UCHAR16 *mark; (16-bit version)
const PCRE_UCHAR32 *mark; (32-bit version)
The version field is an integer containing the version number of the
block format. The initial version was 0; the current version is 2. The
version number will change again in future if additional fields are
added, but the intention is never to remove any of the existing fields.
The callout_number field contains the number of the callout, as com-
piled into the pattern (that is, the number after ?C for manual call-
outs, and 255 for automatically generated callouts).
The offset_vector field is a pointer to the vector of offsets that was
passed by the caller to the matching function. When pcre_exec() or
pcre[16|32]_exec() is used, the contents can be inspected, in order to
extract substrings that have been matched so far, in the same way as
for extracting substrings after a match has completed. For the DFA
matching functions, this field is not useful.
The subject and subject_length fields contain copies of the values that
were passed to the matching function.
The start_match field normally contains the offset within the subject
at which the current match attempt started. However, if the escape
sequence \K has been encountered, this value is changed to reflect the
modified starting point. If the pattern is not anchored, the callout
function may be called several times from the same point in the pattern
for different starting points in the subject.
The current_position field contains the offset within the subject of
the current match pointer.
When the pcre_exec() or pcre[16|32]_exec() is used, the capture_top
field contains one more than the number of the highest numbered cap-
tured substring so far. If no substrings have been captured, the value
of capture_top is one. This is always the case when the DFA functions
are used, because they do not support captured substrings.
The capture_last field contains the number of the most recently cap-
tured substring. However, when a recursion exits, the value reverts to
what it was outside the recursion, as do the values of all captured
substrings. If no substrings have been captured, the value of cap-
ture_last is -1. This is always the case for the DFA matching func-
tions.
The callout_data field contains a value that is passed to a matching
function specifically so that it can be passed back in callouts. It is
passed in the callout_data field of a pcre_extra or pcre[16|32]_extra
data structure. If no such data was passed, the value of callout_data
in a callout block is NULL. There is a description of the pcre_extra
structure in the pcreapi documentation.
The pattern_position field is present from version 1 of the callout
structure. It contains the offset to the next item to be matched in the
pattern string.
The next_item_length field is present from version 1 of the callout
structure. It contains the length of the next item to be matched in the
pattern string. When the callout immediately precedes an alternation
bar, a closing parenthesis, or the end of the pattern, the length is
zero. When the callout precedes an opening parenthesis, the length is
that of the entire subpattern.
The pattern_position and next_item_length fields are intended to help
in distinguishing between different automatic callouts, which all have
the same callout number. However, they are set for all callouts.
The mark field is present from version 2 of the callout structure. In
callouts from pcre_exec() or pcre[16|32]_exec() it contains a pointer
to the zero-terminated name of the most recently passed (*MARK),
(*PRUNE), or (*THEN) item in the match, or NULL if no such items have
been passed. Instances of (*PRUNE) or (*THEN) without a name do not
obliterate a previous (*MARK). In callouts from the DFA matching func-
tions this field always contains NULL.
RETURN VALUES
The external callout function returns an integer to PCRE. If the value
is zero, matching proceeds as normal. If the value is greater than
zero, matching fails at the current point, but the testing of other
matching possibilities goes ahead, just as if a lookahead assertion had
failed. If the value is less than zero, the match is abandoned, the
matching function returns the negative value.
Negative values should normally be chosen from the set of
PCRE_ERROR_xxx values. In particular, PCRE_ERROR_NOMATCH forces a stan-
dard "no match" failure. The error number PCRE_ERROR_CALLOUT is
reserved for use by callout functions; it will never be used by PCRE
itself.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 12 November 2013
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCRECOMPAT(3) Library Functions Manual PCRECOMPAT(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PCRE AND PERL
This document describes the differences in the ways that PCRE and Perl
handle regular expressions. The differences described here are with
respect to Perl versions 5.10 and above.
1. PCRE has only a subset of Perl's Unicode support. Details of what it
does have are given in the pcreunicode page.
2. PCRE allows repeat quantifiers only on parenthesized assertions, but
they do not mean what you might think. For example, (?!a){3} does not
assert that the next three characters are not "a". It just asserts that
the next character is not "a" three times (in principle: PCRE optimizes
this to run the assertion just once). Perl allows repeat quantifiers on
other assertions such as \b, but these do not seem to have any use.
3. Capturing subpatterns that occur inside negative lookahead asser-
tions are counted, but their entries in the offsets vector are never
set. Perl sometimes (but not always) sets its numerical variables from
inside negative assertions.
4. Though binary zero characters are supported in the subject string,
they are not allowed in a pattern string because it is passed as a nor-
mal C string, terminated by zero. The escape sequence \0 can be used in
the pattern to represent a binary zero.
5. The following Perl escape sequences are not supported: \l, \u, \L,
\U, and \N when followed by a character name or Unicode value. (\N on
its own, matching a non-newline character, is supported.) In fact these
are implemented by Perl's general string-handling and are not part of
its pattern matching engine. If any of these are encountered by PCRE,
an error is generated by default. However, if the PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COM-
PAT option is set, \U and \u are interpreted as JavaScript interprets
them.
6. The Perl escape sequences \p, \P, and \X are supported only if PCRE
is built with Unicode character property support. The properties that
can be tested with \p and \P are limited to the general category prop-
erties such as Lu and Nd, script names such as Greek or Han, and the
derived properties Any and L&. PCRE does support the Cs (surrogate)
property, which Perl does not; the Perl documentation says "Because
Perl hides the need for the user to understand the internal representa-
tion of Unicode characters, there is no need to implement the somewhat
messy concept of surrogates."
7. PCRE does support the \Q...\E escape for quoting substrings. Charac-
ters in between are treated as literals. This is slightly different
from Perl in that $ and @ are also handled as literals inside the
quotes. In Perl, they cause variable interpolation (but of course PCRE
does not have variables). Note the following examples:
Pattern PCRE matches Perl matches
\Qabc$xyz\E abc$xyz abc followed by the
contents of $xyz
\Qabc\$xyz\E abc\$xyz abc\$xyz
\Qabc\E\$\Qxyz\E abc$xyz abc$xyz
The \Q...\E sequence is recognized both inside and outside character
classes.
8. Fairly obviously, PCRE does not support the (?{code}) and (??{code})
constructions. However, there is support for recursive patterns. This
is not available in Perl 5.8, but it is in Perl 5.10. Also, the PCRE
"callout" feature allows an external function to be called during pat-
tern matching. See the pcrecallout documentation for details.
9. Subpatterns that are called as subroutines (whether or not recur-
sively) are always treated as atomic groups in PCRE. This is like
Python, but unlike Perl. Captured values that are set outside a sub-
routine call can be reference from inside in PCRE, but not in Perl.
There is a discussion that explains these differences in more detail in
the section on recursion differences from Perl in the pcrepattern page.
10. If any of the backtracking control verbs are used in a subpattern
that is called as a subroutine (whether or not recursively), their
effect is confined to that subpattern; it does not extend to the sur-
rounding pattern. This is not always the case in Perl. In particular,
if (*THEN) is present in a group that is called as a subroutine, its
action is limited to that group, even if the group does not contain any
| characters. Note that such subpatterns are processed as anchored at
the point where they are tested.
11. If a pattern contains more than one backtracking control verb, the
first one that is backtracked onto acts. For example, in the pattern
A(*COMMIT)B(*PRUNE)C a failure in B triggers (*COMMIT), but a failure
in C triggers (*PRUNE). Perl's behaviour is more complex; in many cases
it is the same as PCRE, but there are examples where it differs.
12. Most backtracking verbs in assertions have their normal actions.
They are not confined to the assertion.
13. There are some differences that are concerned with the settings of
captured strings when part of a pattern is repeated. For example,
matching "aba" against the pattern /^(a(b)?)+$/ in Perl leaves $2
unset, but in PCRE it is set to "b".
14. PCRE's handling of duplicate subpattern numbers and duplicate sub-
pattern names is not as general as Perl's. This is a consequence of the
fact the PCRE works internally just with numbers, using an external ta-
ble to translate between numbers and names. In particular, a pattern
such as (?|(?<a>A)|(?<b>B), where the two capturing parentheses have
the same number but different names, is not supported, and causes an
error at compile time. If it were allowed, it would not be possible to
distinguish which parentheses matched, because both names map to cap-
turing subpattern number 1. To avoid this confusing situation, an error
is given at compile time.
15. Perl recognizes comments in some places that PCRE does not, for
example, between the ( and ? at the start of a subpattern. If the /x
modifier is set, Perl allows white space between ( and ? (though cur-
rent Perls warn that this is deprecated) but PCRE never does, even if
the PCRE_EXTENDED option is set.
16. Perl, when in warning mode, gives warnings for character classes
such as [A-\d] or [a-[:digit:]]. It then treats the hyphens as liter-
als. PCRE has no warning features, so it gives an error in these cases
because they are almost certainly user mistakes.
17. In PCRE, the upper/lower case character properties Lu and Ll are
not affected when case-independent matching is specified. For example,
\p{Lu} always matches an upper case letter. I think Perl has changed in
this respect; in the release at the time of writing (5.16), \p{Lu} and
\p{Ll} match all letters, regardless of case, when case independence is
specified.
18. PCRE provides some extensions to the Perl regular expression facil-
ities. Perl 5.10 includes new features that are not in earlier ver-
sions of Perl, some of which (such as named parentheses) have been in
PCRE for some time. This list is with respect to Perl 5.10:
(a) Although lookbehind assertions in PCRE must match fixed length
strings, each alternative branch of a lookbehind assertion can match a
different length of string. Perl requires them all to have the same
length.
(b) If PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY is set and PCRE_MULTILINE is not set, the $
meta-character matches only at the very end of the string.
(c) If PCRE_EXTRA is set, a backslash followed by a letter with no spe-
cial meaning is faulted. Otherwise, like Perl, the backslash is quietly
ignored. (Perl can be made to issue a warning.)
(d) If PCRE_UNGREEDY is set, the greediness of the repetition quanti-
fiers is inverted, that is, by default they are not greedy, but if fol-
lowed by a question mark they are.
(e) PCRE_ANCHORED can be used at matching time to force a pattern to be
tried only at the first matching position in the subject string.
(f) The PCRE_NOTBOL, PCRE_NOTEOL, PCRE_NOTEMPTY, PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART,
and PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE options for pcre_exec() have no Perl equiva-
lents.
(g) The \R escape sequence can be restricted to match only CR, LF, or
CRLF by the PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF option.
(h) The callout facility is PCRE-specific.
(i) The partial matching facility is PCRE-specific.
(j) Patterns compiled by PCRE can be saved and re-used at a later time,
even on different hosts that have the other endianness. However, this
does not apply to optimized data created by the just-in-time compiler.
(k) The alternative matching functions (pcre_dfa_exec(),
pcre16_dfa_exec() and pcre32_dfa_exec(),) match in a different way and
are not Perl-compatible.
(l) PCRE recognizes some special sequences such as (*CR) at the start
of a pattern that set overall options that cannot be changed within the
pattern.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 10 November 2013
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCREPATTERN(3) Library Functions Manual PCREPATTERN(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
PCRE REGULAR EXPRESSION DETAILS
The syntax and semantics of the regular expressions that are supported
by PCRE are described in detail below. There is a quick-reference syn-
tax summary in the pcresyntax page. PCRE tries to match Perl syntax and
semantics as closely as it can. PCRE also supports some alternative
regular expression syntax (which does not conflict with the Perl syn-
tax) in order to provide some compatibility with regular expressions in
Python, .NET, and Oniguruma.
Perl's regular expressions are described in its own documentation, and
regular expressions in general are covered in a number of books, some
of which have copious examples. Jeffrey Friedl's "Mastering Regular
Expressions", published by O'Reilly, covers regular expressions in
great detail. This description of PCRE's regular expressions is
intended as reference material.
This document discusses the patterns that are supported by PCRE when
one its main matching functions, pcre_exec() (8-bit) or
pcre[16|32]_exec() (16- or 32-bit), is used. PCRE also has alternative
matching functions, pcre_dfa_exec() and pcre[16|32_dfa_exec(), which
match using a different algorithm that is not Perl-compatible. Some of
the features discussed below are not available when DFA matching is
used. The advantages and disadvantages of the alternative functions,
and how they differ from the normal functions, are discussed in the
pcrematching page.
SPECIAL START-OF-PATTERN ITEMS
A number of options that can be passed to pcre_compile() can also be
set by special items at the start of a pattern. These are not Perl-com-
patible, but are provided to make these options accessible to pattern
writers who are not able to change the program that processes the pat-
tern. Any number of these items may appear, but they must all be
together right at the start of the pattern string, and the letters must
be in upper case.
UTF support
The original operation of PCRE was on strings of one-byte characters.
However, there is now also support for UTF-8 strings in the original
library, an extra library that supports 16-bit and UTF-16 character
strings, and a third library that supports 32-bit and UTF-32 character
strings. To use these features, PCRE must be built to include appropri-
ate support. When using UTF strings you must either call the compiling
function with the PCRE_UTF8, PCRE_UTF16, or PCRE_UTF32 option, or the
pattern must start with one of these special sequences:
(*UTF8)
(*UTF16)
(*UTF32)
(*UTF)
(*UTF) is a generic sequence that can be used with any of the
libraries. Starting a pattern with such a sequence is equivalent to
setting the relevant option. How setting a UTF mode affects pattern
matching is mentioned in several places below. There is also a summary
of features in the pcreunicode page.
Some applications that allow their users to supply patterns may wish to
restrict them to non-UTF data for security reasons. If the
PCRE_NEVER_UTF option is set at compile time, (*UTF) etc. are not
allowed, and their appearance causes an error.
Unicode property support
Another special sequence that may appear at the start of a pattern is
(*UCP). This has the same effect as setting the PCRE_UCP option: it
causes sequences such as \d and \w to use Unicode properties to deter-
mine character types, instead of recognizing only characters with codes
less than 128 via a lookup table.
Disabling auto-possessification
If a pattern starts with (*NO_AUTO_POSSESS), it has the same effect as
setting the PCRE_NO_AUTO_POSSESS option at compile time. This stops
PCRE from making quantifiers possessive when what follows cannot match
the repeated item. For example, by default a+b is treated as a++b. For
more details, see the pcreapi documentation.
Disabling start-up optimizations
If a pattern starts with (*NO_START_OPT), it has the same effect as
setting the PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE option either at compile or matching
time. This disables several optimizations for quickly reaching "no
match" results. For more details, see the pcreapi documentation.
Newline conventions
PCRE supports five different conventions for indicating line breaks in
strings: a single CR (carriage return) character, a single LF (line-
feed) character, the two-character sequence CRLF, any of the three pre-
ceding, or any Unicode newline sequence. The pcreapi page has further
discussion about newlines, and shows how to set the newline convention
in the options arguments for the compiling and matching functions.
It is also possible to specify a newline convention by starting a pat-
tern string with one of the following five sequences:
(*CR) carriage return
(*LF) linefeed
(*CRLF) carriage return, followed by linefeed
(*ANYCRLF) any of the three above
(*ANY) all Unicode newline sequences
These override the default and the options given to the compiling func-
tion. For example, on a Unix system where LF is the default newline
sequence, the pattern
(*CR)a.b
changes the convention to CR. That pattern matches "a\nb" because LF is
no longer a newline. If more than one of these settings is present, the
last one is used.
The newline convention affects where the circumflex and dollar asser-
tions are true. It also affects the interpretation of the dot metachar-
acter when PCRE_DOTALL is not set, and the behaviour of \N. However, it
does not affect what the \R escape sequence matches. By default, this
is any Unicode newline sequence, for Perl compatibility. However, this
can be changed; see the description of \R in the section entitled "New-
line sequences" below. A change of \R setting can be combined with a
change of newline convention.
Setting match and recursion limits
The caller of pcre_exec() can set a limit on the number of times the
internal match() function is called and on the maximum depth of recur-
sive calls. These facilities are provided to catch runaway matches that
are provoked by patterns with huge matching trees (a typical example is
a pattern with nested unlimited repeats) and to avoid running out of
system stack by too much recursion. When one of these limits is
reached, pcre_exec() gives an error return. The limits can also be set
by items at the start of the pattern of the form
(*LIMIT_MATCH=d)
(*LIMIT_RECURSION=d)
where d is any number of decimal digits. However, the value of the set-
ting must be less than the value set (or defaulted) by the caller of
pcre_exec() for it to have any effect. In other words, the pattern
writer can lower the limits set by the programmer, but not raise them.
If there is more than one setting of one of these limits, the lower
value is used.
EBCDIC CHARACTER CODES
PCRE can be compiled to run in an environment that uses EBCDIC as its
character code rather than ASCII or Unicode (typically a mainframe sys-
tem). In the sections below, character code values are ASCII or Uni-
code; in an EBCDIC environment these characters may have different code
values, and there are no code points greater than 255.
CHARACTERS AND METACHARACTERS
A regular expression is a pattern that is matched against a subject
string from left to right. Most characters stand for themselves in a
pattern, and match the corresponding characters in the subject. As a
trivial example, the pattern
The quick brown fox
matches a portion of a subject string that is identical to itself. When
caseless matching is specified (the PCRE_CASELESS option), letters are
matched independently of case. In a UTF mode, PCRE always understands
the concept of case for characters whose values are less than 128, so
caseless matching is always possible. For characters with higher val-
ues, the concept of case is supported if PCRE is compiled with Unicode
property support, but not otherwise. If you want to use caseless
matching for characters 128 and above, you must ensure that PCRE is
compiled with Unicode property support as well as with UTF support.
The power of regular expressions comes from the ability to include
alternatives and repetitions in the pattern. These are encoded in the
pattern by the use of metacharacters, which do not stand for themselves
but instead are interpreted in some special way.
There are two different sets of metacharacters: those that are recog-
nized anywhere in the pattern except within square brackets, and those
that are recognized within square brackets. Outside square brackets,
the metacharacters are as follows:
\ general escape character with several uses
^ assert start of string (or line, in multiline mode)
$ assert end of string (or line, in multiline mode)
. match any character except newline (by default)
[ start character class definition
| start of alternative branch
( start subpattern
) end subpattern
? extends the meaning of (
also 0 or 1 quantifier
also quantifier minimizer
* 0 or more quantifier
+ 1 or more quantifier
also "possessive quantifier"
{ start min/max quantifier
Part of a pattern that is in square brackets is called a "character
class". In a character class the only metacharacters are:
\ general escape character
^ negate the class, but only if the first character
- indicates character range
[ POSIX character class (only if followed by POSIX
syntax)
] terminates the character class
The following sections describe the use of each of the metacharacters.
BACKSLASH
The backslash character has several uses. Firstly, if it is followed by
a character that is not a number or a letter, it takes away any special
meaning that character may have. This use of backslash as an escape
character applies both inside and outside character classes.
For example, if you want to match a * character, you write \* in the
pattern. This escaping action applies whether or not the following
character would otherwise be interpreted as a metacharacter, so it is
always safe to precede a non-alphanumeric with backslash to specify
that it stands for itself. In particular, if you want to match a back-
slash, you write \\.
In a UTF mode, only ASCII numbers and letters have any special meaning
after a backslash. All other characters (in particular, those whose
codepoints are greater than 127) are treated as literals.
If a pattern is compiled with the PCRE_EXTENDED option, most white
space in the pattern (other than in a character class), and characters
between a # outside a character class and the next newline, inclusive,
are ignored. An escaping backslash can be used to include a white space
or # character as part of the pattern.
If you want to remove the special meaning from a sequence of charac-
ters, you can do so by putting them between \Q and \E. This is differ-
ent from Perl in that $ and @ are handled as literals in \Q...\E
sequences in PCRE, whereas in Perl, $ and @ cause variable interpola-
tion. Note the following examples:
Pattern PCRE matches Perl matches
\Qabc$xyz\E abc$xyz abc followed by the
contents of $xyz
\Qabc\$xyz\E abc\$xyz abc\$xyz
\Qabc\E\$\Qxyz\E abc$xyz abc$xyz
The \Q...\E sequence is recognized both inside and outside character
classes. An isolated \E that is not preceded by \Q is ignored. If \Q
is not followed by \E later in the pattern, the literal interpretation
continues to the end of the pattern (that is, \E is assumed at the
end). If the isolated \Q is inside a character class, this causes an
error, because the character class is not terminated.
Non-printing characters
A second use of backslash provides a way of encoding non-printing char-
acters in patterns in a visible manner. There is no restriction on the
appearance of non-printing characters, apart from the binary zero that
terminates a pattern, but when a pattern is being prepared by text
editing, it is often easier to use one of the following escape
sequences than the binary character it represents. In an ASCII or Uni-
code environment, these escapes are as follows:
\a alarm, that is, the BEL character (hex 07)
\cx "control-x", where x is any ASCII character
\e escape (hex 1B)
\f form feed (hex 0C)
\n linefeed (hex 0A)
\r carriage return (hex 0D)
\t tab (hex 09)
\0dd character with octal code 0dd
\ddd character with octal code ddd, or back reference
\o{ddd..} character with octal code ddd..
\xhh character with hex code hh
\x{hhh..} character with hex code hhh.. (non-JavaScript mode)
\uhhhh character with hex code hhhh (JavaScript mode only)
The precise effect of \cx on ASCII characters is as follows: if x is a
lower case letter, it is converted to upper case. Then bit 6 of the
character (hex 40) is inverted. Thus \cA to \cZ become hex 01 to hex 1A
(A is 41, Z is 5A), but \c{ becomes hex 3B ({ is 7B), and \c; becomes
hex 7B (; is 3B). If the data item (byte or 16-bit value) following \c
has a value greater than 127, a compile-time error occurs. This locks
out non-ASCII characters in all modes.
When PCRE is compiled in EBCDIC mode, \a, \e, \f, \n, \r, and \t gener-
ate the appropriate EBCDIC code values. The \c escape is processed as
specified for Perl in the perlebcdic document. The only characters that
are allowed after \c are A-Z, a-z, or one of @, [, \, ], ^, _, or ?.
Any other character provokes a compile-time error. The sequence \c@
encodes character code 0; after \c the letters (in either case) encode
characters 1-26 (hex 01 to hex 1A); [, \, ], ^, and _ encode characters
27-31 (hex 1B to hex 1F), and \c? becomes either 255 (hex FF) or 95
(hex 5F).
Thus, apart from \c?, these escapes generate the same character code
values as they do in an ASCII environment, though the meanings of the
values mostly differ. For example, \cG always generates code value 7,
which is BEL in ASCII but DEL in EBCDIC.
The sequence \c? generates DEL (127, hex 7F) in an ASCII environment,
but because 127 is not a control character in EBCDIC, Perl makes it
generate the APC character. Unfortunately, there are several variants
of EBCDIC. In most of them the APC character has the value 255 (hex
FF), but in the one Perl calls POSIX-BC its value is 95 (hex 5F). If
certain other characters have POSIX-BC values, PCRE makes \c? generate
95; otherwise it generates 255.
After \0 up to two further octal digits are read. If there are fewer
than two digits, just those that are present are used. Thus the
sequence \0\x\015 specifies two binary zeros followed by a CR character
(code value 13). Make sure you supply two digits after the initial zero
if the pattern character that follows is itself an octal digit.
The escape \o must be followed by a sequence of octal digits, enclosed
in braces. An error occurs if this is not the case. This escape is a
recent addition to Perl; it provides way of specifying character code
points as octal numbers greater than 0777, and it also allows octal
numbers and back references to be unambiguously specified.
For greater clarity and unambiguity, it is best to avoid following \ by
a digit greater than zero. Instead, use \o{} or \x{} to specify charac-
ter numbers, and \g{} to specify back references. The following para-
graphs describe the old, ambiguous syntax.
The handling of a backslash followed by a digit other than 0 is compli-
cated, and Perl has changed in recent releases, causing PCRE also to
change. Outside a character class, PCRE reads the digit and any follow-
ing digits as a decimal number. If the number is less than 8, or if
there have been at least that many previous capturing left parentheses
in the expression, the entire sequence is taken as a back reference. A
description of how this works is given later, following the discussion
of parenthesized subpatterns.
Inside a character class, or if the decimal number following \ is
greater than 7 and there have not been that many capturing subpatterns,
PCRE handles \8 and \9 as the literal characters "8" and "9", and oth-
erwise re-reads up to three octal digits following the backslash, using
them to generate a data character. Any subsequent digits stand for
themselves. For example:
\040 is another way of writing an ASCII space
\40 is the same, provided there are fewer than 40
previous capturing subpatterns
\7 is always a back reference
\11 might be a back reference, or another way of
writing a tab
\011 is always a tab
\0113 is a tab followed by the character "3"
\113 might be a back reference, otherwise the
character with octal code 113
\377 might be a back reference, otherwise
the value 255 (decimal)
\81 is either a back reference, or the two
characters "8" and "1"
Note that octal values of 100 or greater that are specified using this
syntax must not be introduced by a leading zero, because no more than
three octal digits are ever read.
By default, after \x that is not followed by {, from zero to two hexa-
decimal digits are read (letters can be in upper or lower case). Any
number of hexadecimal digits may appear between \x{ and }. If a charac-
ter other than a hexadecimal digit appears between \x{ and }, or if
there is no terminating }, an error occurs.
If the PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT option is set, the interpretation of \x
is as just described only when it is followed by two hexadecimal dig-
its. Otherwise, it matches a literal "x" character. In JavaScript
mode, support for code points greater than 256 is provided by \u, which
must be followed by four hexadecimal digits; otherwise it matches a
literal "u" character.
Characters whose value is less than 256 can be defined by either of the
two syntaxes for \x (or by \u in JavaScript mode). There is no differ-
ence in the way they are handled. For example, \xdc is exactly the same
as \x{dc} (or \u00dc in JavaScript mode).
Constraints on character values
Characters that are specified using octal or hexadecimal numbers are
limited to certain values, as follows:
8-bit non-UTF mode less than 0x100
8-bit UTF-8 mode less than 0x10ffff and a valid codepoint
16-bit non-UTF mode less than 0x10000
16-bit UTF-16 mode less than 0x10ffff and a valid codepoint
32-bit non-UTF mode less than 0x100000000
32-bit UTF-32 mode less than 0x10ffff and a valid codepoint
Invalid Unicode codepoints are the range 0xd800 to 0xdfff (the so-
called "surrogate" codepoints), and 0xffef.
Escape sequences in character classes
All the sequences that define a single character value can be used both
inside and outside character classes. In addition, inside a character
class, \b is interpreted as the backspace character (hex 08).
\N is not allowed in a character class. \B, \R, and \X are not special
inside a character class. Like other unrecognized escape sequences,
they are treated as the literal characters "B", "R", and "X" by
default, but cause an error if the PCRE_EXTRA option is set. Outside a
character class, these sequences have different meanings.
Unsupported escape sequences
In Perl, the sequences \l, \L, \u, and \U are recognized by its string
handler and used to modify the case of following characters. By
default, PCRE does not support these escape sequences. However, if the
PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT option is set, \U matches a "U" character, and
\u can be used to define a character by code point, as described in the
previous section.
Absolute and relative back references
The sequence \g followed by an unsigned or a negative number, option-
ally enclosed in braces, is an absolute or relative back reference. A
named back reference can be coded as \g{name}. Back references are dis-
cussed later, following the discussion of parenthesized subpatterns.
Absolute and relative subroutine calls
For compatibility with Oniguruma, the non-Perl syntax \g followed by a
name or a number enclosed either in angle brackets or single quotes, is
an alternative syntax for referencing a subpattern as a "subroutine".
Details are discussed later. Note that \g{...} (Perl syntax) and
\g<...> (Oniguruma syntax) are not synonymous. The former is a back
reference; the latter is a subroutine call.
Generic character types
Another use of backslash is for specifying generic character types:
\d any decimal digit
\D any character that is not a decimal digit
\h any horizontal white space character
\H any character that is not a horizontal white space character
\s any white space character
\S any character that is not a white space character
\v any vertical white space character
\V any character that is not a vertical white space character
\w any "word" character
\W any "non-word" character
There is also the single sequence \N, which matches a non-newline char-
acter. This is the same as the "." metacharacter when PCRE_DOTALL is
not set. Perl also uses \N to match characters by name; PCRE does not
support this.
Each pair of lower and upper case escape sequences partitions the com-
plete set of characters into two disjoint sets. Any given character
matches one, and only one, of each pair. The sequences can appear both
inside and outside character classes. They each match one character of
the appropriate type. If the current matching point is at the end of
the subject string, all of them fail, because there is no character to
match.
For compatibility with Perl, \s did not used to match the VT character
(code 11), which made it different from the the POSIX "space" class.
However, Perl added VT at release 5.18, and PCRE followed suit at
release 8.34. The default \s characters are now HT (9), LF (10), VT
(11), FF (12), CR (13), and space (32), which are defined as white
space in the "C" locale. This list may vary if locale-specific matching
is taking place. For example, in some locales the "non-breaking space"
character (\xA0) is recognized as white space, and in others the VT
character is not.
A "word" character is an underscore or any character that is a letter
or digit. By default, the definition of letters and digits is con-
trolled by PCRE's low-valued character tables, and may vary if locale-
specific matching is taking place (see "Locale support" in the pcreapi
page). For example, in a French locale such as "fr_FR" in Unix-like
systems, or "french" in Windows, some character codes greater than 127
are used for accented letters, and these are then matched by \w. The
use of locales with Unicode is discouraged.
By default, characters whose code points are greater than 127 never
match \d, \s, or \w, and always match \D, \S, and \W, although this may
vary for characters in the range 128-255 when locale-specific matching
is happening. These escape sequences retain their original meanings
from before Unicode support was available, mainly for efficiency rea-
sons. If PCRE is compiled with Unicode property support, and the
PCRE_UCP option is set, the behaviour is changed so that Unicode prop-
erties are used to determine character types, as follows:
\d any character that matches \p{Nd} (decimal digit)
\s any character that matches \p{Z} or \h or \v
\w any character that matches \p{L} or \p{N}, plus underscore
The upper case escapes match the inverse sets of characters. Note that
\d matches only decimal digits, whereas \w matches any Unicode digit,
as well as any Unicode letter, and underscore. Note also that PCRE_UCP
affects \b, and \B because they are defined in terms of \w and \W.
Matching these sequences is noticeably slower when PCRE_UCP is set.
The sequences \h, \H, \v, and \V are features that were added to Perl
at release 5.10. In contrast to the other sequences, which match only
ASCII characters by default, these always match certain high-valued
code points, whether or not PCRE_UCP is set. The horizontal space char-
acters are:
U+0009 Horizontal tab (HT)
U+0020 Space
U+00A0 Non-break space
U+1680 Ogham space mark
U+180E Mongolian vowel separator
U+2000 En quad
U+2001 Em quad
U+2002 En space
U+2003 Em space
U+2004 Three-per-em space
U+2005 Four-per-em space
U+2006 Six-per-em space
U+2007 Figure space
U+2008 Punctuation space
U+2009 Thin space
U+200A Hair space
U+202F Narrow no-break space
U+205F Medium mathematical space
U+3000 Ideographic space
The vertical space characters are:
U+000A Linefeed (LF)
U+000B Vertical tab (VT)
U+000C Form feed (FF)
U+000D Carriage return (CR)
U+0085 Next line (NEL)
U+2028 Line separator
U+2029 Paragraph separator
In 8-bit, non-UTF-8 mode, only the characters with codepoints less than
256 are relevant.
Newline sequences
Outside a character class, by default, the escape sequence \R matches
any Unicode newline sequence. In 8-bit non-UTF-8 mode \R is equivalent
to the following:
(?>\r\n|\n|\x0b|\f|\r|\x85)
This is an example of an "atomic group", details of which are given
below. This particular group matches either the two-character sequence
CR followed by LF, or one of the single characters LF (linefeed,
U+000A), VT (vertical tab, U+000B), FF (form feed, U+000C), CR (car-
riage return, U+000D), or NEL (next line, U+0085). The two-character
sequence is treated as a single unit that cannot be split.
In other modes, two additional characters whose codepoints are greater
than 255 are added: LS (line separator, U+2028) and PS (paragraph sepa-
rator, U+2029). Unicode character property support is not needed for
these characters to be recognized.
It is possible to restrict \R to match only CR, LF, or CRLF (instead of
the complete set of Unicode line endings) by setting the option
PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF either at compile time or when the pattern is matched.
(BSR is an abbrevation for "backslash R".) This can be made the default
when PCRE is built; if this is the case, the other behaviour can be
requested via the PCRE_BSR_UNICODE option. It is also possible to
specify these settings by starting a pattern string with one of the
following sequences:
(*BSR_ANYCRLF) CR, LF, or CRLF only
(*BSR_UNICODE) any Unicode newline sequence
These override the default and the options given to the compiling func-
tion, but they can themselves be overridden by options given to a
matching function. Note that these special settings, which are not
Perl-compatible, are recognized only at the very start of a pattern,
and that they must be in upper case. If more than one of them is
present, the last one is used. They can be combined with a change of
newline convention; for example, a pattern can start with:
(*ANY)(*BSR_ANYCRLF)
They can also be combined with the (*UTF8), (*UTF16), (*UTF32), (*UTF)
or (*UCP) special sequences. Inside a character class, \R is treated as
an unrecognized escape sequence, and so matches the letter "R" by
default, but causes an error if PCRE_EXTRA is set.
Unicode character properties
When PCRE is built with Unicode character property support, three addi-
tional escape sequences that match characters with specific properties
are available. When in 8-bit non-UTF-8 mode, these sequences are of
course limited to testing characters whose codepoints are less than
256, but they do work in this mode. The extra escape sequences are:
\p{xx} a character with the xx property
\P{xx} a character without the xx property
\X a Unicode extended grapheme cluster
The property names represented by xx above are limited to the Unicode
script names, the general category properties, "Any", which matches any
character (including newline), and some special PCRE properties
(described in the next section). Other Perl properties such as "InMu-
sicalSymbols" are not currently supported by PCRE. Note that \P{Any}
does not match any characters, so always causes a match failure.
Sets of Unicode characters are defined as belonging to certain scripts.
A character from one of these sets can be matched using a script name.
For example:
\p{Greek}
\P{Han}
Those that are not part of an identified script are lumped together as
"Common". The current list of scripts is:
Arabic, Armenian, Avestan, Balinese, Bamum, Bassa_Vah, Batak, Bengali,
Bopomofo, Brahmi, Braille, Buginese, Buhid, Canadian_Aboriginal, Car-
ian, Caucasian_Albanian, Chakma, Cham, Cherokee, Common, Coptic, Cunei-
form, Cypriot, Cyrillic, Deseret, Devanagari, Duployan, Egyptian_Hiero-
glyphs, Elbasan, Ethiopic, Georgian, Glagolitic, Gothic, Grantha,
Greek, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Han, Hangul, Hanunoo, Hebrew, Hiragana,
Imperial_Aramaic, Inherited, Inscriptional_Pahlavi, Inscrip-
tional_Parthian, Javanese, Kaithi, Kannada, Katakana, Kayah_Li,
Kharoshthi, Khmer, Khojki, Khudawadi, Lao, Latin, Lepcha, Limbu, Lin-
ear_A, Linear_B, Lisu, Lycian, Lydian, Mahajani, Malayalam, Mandaic,
Manichaean, Meetei_Mayek, Mende_Kikakui, Meroitic_Cursive,
Meroitic_Hieroglyphs, Miao, Modi, Mongolian, Mro, Myanmar, Nabataean,
New_Tai_Lue, Nko, Ogham, Ol_Chiki, Old_Italic, Old_North_Arabian,
Old_Permic, Old_Persian, Old_South_Arabian, Old_Turkic, Oriya, Osmanya,
Pahawh_Hmong, Palmyrene, Pau_Cin_Hau, Phags_Pa, Phoenician,
Psalter_Pahlavi, Rejang, Runic, Samaritan, Saurashtra, Sharada, Sha-
vian, Siddham, Sinhala, Sora_Sompeng, Sundanese, Syloti_Nagri, Syriac,
Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Tai_Le, Tai_Tham, Tai_Viet, Takri, Tamil, Telugu,
Thaana, Thai, Tibetan, Tifinagh, Tirhuta, Ugaritic, Vai, Warang_Citi,
Yi.
Each character has exactly one Unicode general category property, spec-
ified by a two-letter abbreviation. For compatibility with Perl, nega-
tion can be specified by including a circumflex between the opening
brace and the property name. For example, \p{^Lu} is the same as
\P{Lu}.
If only one letter is specified with \p or \P, it includes all the gen-
eral category properties that start with that letter. In this case, in
the absence of negation, the curly brackets in the escape sequence are
optional; these two examples have the same effect:
\p{L}
\pL
The following general category property codes are supported:
C Other
Cc Control
Cf Format
Cn Unassigned
Co Private use
Cs Surrogate
L Letter
Ll Lower case letter
Lm Modifier letter
Lo Other letter
Lt Title case letter
Lu Upper case letter
M Mark
Mc Spacing mark
Me Enclosing mark
Mn Non-spacing mark
N Number
Nd Decimal number
Nl Letter number
No Other number
P Punctuation
Pc Connector punctuation
Pd Dash punctuation
Pe Close punctuation
Pf Final punctuation
Pi Initial punctuation
Po Other punctuation
Ps Open punctuation
S Symbol
Sc Currency symbol
Sk Modifier symbol
Sm Mathematical symbol
So Other symbol
Z Separator
Zl Line separator
Zp Paragraph separator
Zs Space separator
The special property L& is also supported: it matches a character that
has the Lu, Ll, or Lt property, in other words, a letter that is not
classified as a modifier or "other".
The Cs (Surrogate) property applies only to characters in the range
U+D800 to U+DFFF. Such characters are not valid in Unicode strings and
so cannot be tested by PCRE, unless UTF validity checking has been
turned off (see the discussion of PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK,
PCRE_NO_UTF16_CHECK and PCRE_NO_UTF32_CHECK in the pcreapi page). Perl
does not support the Cs property.
The long synonyms for property names that Perl supports (such as
\p{Letter}) are not supported by PCRE, nor is it permitted to prefix
any of these properties with "Is".
No character that is in the Unicode table has the Cn (unassigned) prop-
erty. Instead, this property is assumed for any code point that is not
in the Unicode table.
Specifying caseless matching does not affect these escape sequences.
For example, \p{Lu} always matches only upper case letters. This is
different from the behaviour of current versions of Perl.
Matching characters by Unicode property is not fast, because PCRE has
to do a multistage table lookup in order to find a character's prop-
erty. That is why the traditional escape sequences such as \d and \w do
not use Unicode properties in PCRE by default, though you can make them
do so by setting the PCRE_UCP option or by starting the pattern with
(*UCP).
Extended grapheme clusters
The \X escape matches any number of Unicode characters that form an
"extended grapheme cluster", and treats the sequence as an atomic group
(see below). Up to and including release 8.31, PCRE matched an ear-
lier, simpler definition that was equivalent to
(?>\PM\pM*)
That is, it matched a character without the "mark" property, followed
by zero or more characters with the "mark" property. Characters with
the "mark" property are typically non-spacing accents that affect the
preceding character.
This simple definition was extended in Unicode to include more compli-
cated kinds of composite character by giving each character a grapheme
breaking property, and creating rules that use these properties to
define the boundaries of extended grapheme clusters. In releases of
PCRE later than 8.31, \X matches one of these clusters.
\X always matches at least one character. Then it decides whether to
add additional characters according to the following rules for ending a
cluster:
1. End at the end of the subject string.
2. Do not end between CR and LF; otherwise end after any control char-
acter.
3. Do not break Hangul (a Korean script) syllable sequences. Hangul
characters are of five types: L, V, T, LV, and LVT. An L character may
be followed by an L, V, LV, or LVT character; an LV or V character may
be followed by a V or T character; an LVT or T character may be follwed
only by a T character.
4. Do not end before extending characters or spacing marks. Characters
with the "mark" property always have the "extend" grapheme breaking
property.
5. Do not end after prepend characters.
6. Otherwise, end the cluster.
PCRE's additional properties
As well as the standard Unicode properties described above, PCRE sup-
ports four more that make it possible to convert traditional escape
sequences such as \w and \s to use Unicode properties. PCRE uses these
non-standard, non-Perl properties internally when PCRE_UCP is set. How-
ever, they may also be used explicitly. These properties are:
Xan Any alphanumeric character
Xps Any POSIX space character
Xsp Any Perl space character
Xwd Any Perl "word" character
Xan matches characters that have either the L (letter) or the N (num-
ber) property. Xps matches the characters tab, linefeed, vertical tab,
form feed, or carriage return, and any other character that has the Z
(separator) property. Xsp is the same as Xps; it used to exclude ver-
tical tab, for Perl compatibility, but Perl changed, and so PCRE fol-
lowed at release 8.34. Xwd matches the same characters as Xan, plus
underscore.
There is another non-standard property, Xuc, which matches any charac-
ter that can be represented by a Universal Character Name in C++ and
other programming languages. These are the characters $, @, ` (grave
accent), and all characters with Unicode code points greater than or
equal to U+00A0, except for the surrogates U+D800 to U+DFFF. Note that
most base (ASCII) characters are excluded. (Universal Character Names
are of the form \uHHHH or \UHHHHHHHH where H is a hexadecimal digit.
Note that the Xuc property does not match these sequences but the char-
acters that they represent.)
Resetting the match start
The escape sequence \K causes any previously matched characters not to
be included in the final matched sequence. For example, the pattern:
foo\Kbar
matches "foobar", but reports that it has matched "bar". This feature
is similar to a lookbehind assertion (described below). However, in
this case, the part of the subject before the real match does not have
to be of fixed length, as lookbehind assertions do. The use of \K does
not interfere with the setting of captured substrings. For example,
when the pattern
(foo)\Kbar
matches "foobar", the first substring is still set to "foo".
Perl documents that the use of \K within assertions is "not well
defined". In PCRE, \K is acted upon when it occurs inside positive
assertions, but is ignored in negative assertions. Note that when a
pattern such as (?=ab\K) matches, the reported start of the match can
be greater than the end of the match.
Simple assertions
The final use of backslash is for certain simple assertions. An asser-
tion specifies a condition that has to be met at a particular point in
a match, without consuming any characters from the subject string. The
use of subpatterns for more complicated assertions is described below.
The backslashed assertions are:
\b matches at a word boundary
\B matches when not at a word boundary
\A matches at the start of the subject
\Z matches at the end of the subject
also matches before a newline at the end of the subject
\z matches only at the end of the subject
\G matches at the first matching position in the subject
Inside a character class, \b has a different meaning; it matches the
backspace character. If any other of these assertions appears in a
character class, by default it matches the corresponding literal char-
acter (for example, \B matches the letter B). However, if the
PCRE_EXTRA option is set, an "invalid escape sequence" error is gener-
ated instead.
A word boundary is a position in the subject string where the current
character and the previous character do not both match \w or \W (i.e.
one matches \w and the other matches \W), or the start or end of the
string if the first or last character matches \w, respectively. In a
UTF mode, the meanings of \w and \W can be changed by setting the
PCRE_UCP option. When this is done, it also affects \b and \B. Neither
PCRE nor Perl has a separate "start of word" or "end of word" metase-
quence. However, whatever follows \b normally determines which it is.
For example, the fragment \ba matches "a" at the start of a word.
The \A, \Z, and \z assertions differ from the traditional circumflex
and dollar (described in the next section) in that they only ever match
at the very start and end of the subject string, whatever options are
set. Thus, they are independent of multiline mode. These three asser-
tions are not affected by the PCRE_NOTBOL or PCRE_NOTEOL options, which
affect only the behaviour of the circumflex and dollar metacharacters.
However, if the startoffset argument of pcre_exec() is non-zero, indi-
cating that matching is to start at a point other than the beginning of
the subject, \A can never match. The difference between \Z and \z is
that \Z matches before a newline at the end of the string as well as at
the very end, whereas \z matches only at the end.
The \G assertion is true only when the current matching position is at
the start point of the match, as specified by the startoffset argument
of pcre_exec(). It differs from \A when the value of startoffset is
non-zero. By calling pcre_exec() multiple times with appropriate argu-
ments, you can mimic Perl's /g option, and it is in this kind of imple-
mentation where \G can be useful.
Note, however, that PCRE's interpretation of \G, as the start of the
current match, is subtly different from Perl's, which defines it as the
end of the previous match. In Perl, these can be different when the
previously matched string was empty. Because PCRE does just one match
at a time, it cannot reproduce this behaviour.
If all the alternatives of a pattern begin with \G, the expression is
anchored to the starting match position, and the "anchored" flag is set
in the compiled regular expression.
CIRCUMFLEX AND DOLLAR
The circumflex and dollar metacharacters are zero-width assertions.
That is, they test for a particular condition being true without con-
suming any characters from the subject string.
Outside a character class, in the default matching mode, the circumflex
character is an assertion that is true only if the current matching
point is at the start of the subject string. If the startoffset argu-
ment of pcre_exec() is non-zero, circumflex can never match if the
PCRE_MULTILINE option is unset. Inside a character class, circumflex
has an entirely different meaning (see below).
Circumflex need not be the first character of the pattern if a number
of alternatives are involved, but it should be the first thing in each
alternative in which it appears if the pattern is ever to match that
branch. If all possible alternatives start with a circumflex, that is,
if the pattern is constrained to match only at the start of the sub-
ject, it is said to be an "anchored" pattern. (There are also other
constructs that can cause a pattern to be anchored.)
The dollar character is an assertion that is true only if the current
matching point is at the end of the subject string, or immediately
before a newline at the end of the string (by default). Note, however,
that it does not actually match the newline. Dollar need not be the
last character of the pattern if a number of alternatives are involved,
but it should be the last item in any branch in which it appears. Dol-
lar has no special meaning in a character class.
The meaning of dollar can be changed so that it matches only at the
very end of the string, by setting the PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY option at
compile time. This does not affect the \Z assertion.
The meanings of the circumflex and dollar characters are changed if the
PCRE_MULTILINE option is set. When this is the case, a circumflex
matches immediately after internal newlines as well as at the start of
the subject string. It does not match after a newline that ends the
string. A dollar matches before any newlines in the string, as well as
at the very end, when PCRE_MULTILINE is set. When newline is specified
as the two-character sequence CRLF, isolated CR and LF characters do
not indicate newlines.
For example, the pattern /^abc$/ matches the subject string "def\nabc"
(where \n represents a newline) in multiline mode, but not otherwise.
Consequently, patterns that are anchored in single line mode because
all branches start with ^ are not anchored in multiline mode, and a
match for circumflex is possible when the startoffset argument of
pcre_exec() is non-zero. The PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY option is ignored if
PCRE_MULTILINE is set.
Note that the sequences \A, \Z, and \z can be used to match the start
and end of the subject in both modes, and if all branches of a pattern
start with \A it is always anchored, whether or not PCRE_MULTILINE is
set.
FULL STOP (PERIOD, DOT) AND \N
Outside a character class, a dot in the pattern matches any one charac-
ter in the subject string except (by default) a character that signi-
fies the end of a line.
When a line ending is defined as a single character, dot never matches
that character; when the two-character sequence CRLF is used, dot does
not match CR if it is immediately followed by LF, but otherwise it
matches all characters (including isolated CRs and LFs). When any Uni-
code line endings are being recognized, dot does not match CR or LF or
any of the other line ending characters.
The behaviour of dot with regard to newlines can be changed. If the
PCRE_DOTALL option is set, a dot matches any one character, without
exception. If the two-character sequence CRLF is present in the subject
string, it takes two dots to match it.
The handling of dot is entirely independent of the handling of circum-
flex and dollar, the only relationship being that they both involve
newlines. Dot has no special meaning in a character class.
The escape sequence \N behaves like a dot, except that it is not
affected by the PCRE_DOTALL option. In other words, it matches any
character except one that signifies the end of a line. Perl also uses
\N to match characters by name; PCRE does not support this.
MATCHING A SINGLE DATA UNIT
Outside a character class, the escape sequence \C matches any one data
unit, whether or not a UTF mode is set. In the 8-bit library, one data
unit is one byte; in the 16-bit library it is a 16-bit unit; in the
32-bit library it is a 32-bit unit. Unlike a dot, \C always matches
line-ending characters. The feature is provided in Perl in order to
match individual bytes in UTF-8 mode, but it is unclear how it can use-
fully be used. Because \C breaks up characters into individual data
units, matching one unit with \C in a UTF mode means that the rest of
the string may start with a malformed UTF character. This has undefined
results, because PCRE assumes that it is dealing with valid UTF strings
(and by default it checks this at the start of processing unless the
PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK, PCRE_NO_UTF16_CHECK or PCRE_NO_UTF32_CHECK option
is used).
PCRE does not allow \C to appear in lookbehind assertions (described
below) in a UTF mode, because this would make it impossible to calcu-
late the length of the lookbehind.
In general, the \C escape sequence is best avoided. However, one way of
using it that avoids the problem of malformed UTF characters is to use
a lookahead to check the length of the next character, as in this pat-
tern, which could be used with a UTF-8 string (ignore white space and
line breaks):
(?| (?=[\x00-\x7f])(\C) |
(?=[\x80-\x{7ff}])(\C)(\C) |
(?=[\x{800}-\x{ffff}])(\C)(\C)(\C) |
(?=[\x{10000}-\x{1fffff}])(\C)(\C)(\C)(\C))
A group that starts with (?| resets the capturing parentheses numbers
in each alternative (see "Duplicate Subpattern Numbers" below). The
assertions at the start of each branch check the next UTF-8 character
for values whose encoding uses 1, 2, 3, or 4 bytes, respectively. The
character's individual bytes are then captured by the appropriate num-
ber of groups.
SQUARE BRACKETS AND CHARACTER CLASSES
An opening square bracket introduces a character class, terminated by a
closing square bracket. A closing square bracket on its own is not spe-
cial by default. However, if the PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT option is set,
a lone closing square bracket causes a compile-time error. If a closing
square bracket is required as a member of the class, it should be the
first data character in the class (after an initial circumflex, if
present) or escaped with a backslash.
A character class matches a single character in the subject. In a UTF
mode, the character may be more than one data unit long. A matched
character must be in the set of characters defined by the class, unless
the first character in the class definition is a circumflex, in which
case the subject character must not be in the set defined by the class.
If a circumflex is actually required as a member of the class, ensure
it is not the first character, or escape it with a backslash.
For example, the character class [aeiou] matches any lower case vowel,
while [^aeiou] matches any character that is not a lower case vowel.
Note that a circumflex is just a convenient notation for specifying the
characters that are in the class by enumerating those that are not. A
class that starts with a circumflex is not an assertion; it still con-
sumes a character from the subject string, and therefore it fails if
the current pointer is at the end of the string.
In UTF-8 (UTF-16, UTF-32) mode, characters with values greater than 255
(0xffff) can be included in a class as a literal string of data units,
or by using the \x{ escaping mechanism.
When caseless matching is set, any letters in a class represent both
their upper case and lower case versions, so for example, a caseless
[aeiou] matches "A" as well as "a", and a caseless [^aeiou] does not
match "A", whereas a caseful version would. In a UTF mode, PCRE always
understands the concept of case for characters whose values are less
than 128, so caseless matching is always possible. For characters with
higher values, the concept of case is supported if PCRE is compiled
with Unicode property support, but not otherwise. If you want to use
caseless matching in a UTF mode for characters 128 and above, you must
ensure that PCRE is compiled with Unicode property support as well as
with UTF support.
Characters that might indicate line breaks are never treated in any
special way when matching character classes, whatever line-ending
sequence is in use, and whatever setting of the PCRE_DOTALL and
PCRE_MULTILINE options is used. A class such as [^a] always matches one
of these characters.
The minus (hyphen) character can be used to specify a range of charac-
ters in a character class. For example, [d-m] matches any letter
between d and m, inclusive. If a minus character is required in a
class, it must be escaped with a backslash or appear in a position
where it cannot be interpreted as indicating a range, typically as the
first or last character in the class, or immediately after a range. For
example, [b-d-z] matches letters in the range b to d, a hyphen charac-
ter, or z.
It is not possible to have the literal character "]" as the end charac-
ter of a range. A pattern such as [W-]46] is interpreted as a class of
two characters ("W" and "-") followed by a literal string "46]", so it
would match "W46]" or "-46]". However, if the "]" is escaped with a
backslash it is interpreted as the end of range, so [W-\]46] is inter-
preted as a class containing a range followed by two other characters.
The octal or hexadecimal representation of "]" can also be used to end
a range.
An error is generated if a POSIX character class (see below) or an
escape sequence other than one that defines a single character appears
at a point where a range ending character is expected. For example,
[z-\xff] is valid, but [A-\d] and [A-[:digit:]] are not.
Ranges operate in the collating sequence of character values. They can
also be used for characters specified numerically, for example
[\000-\037]. Ranges can include any characters that are valid for the
current mode.
If a range that includes letters is used when caseless matching is set,
it matches the letters in either case. For example, [W-c] is equivalent
to [][\\^_`wxyzabc], matched caselessly, and in a non-UTF mode, if
character tables for a French locale are in use, [\xc8-\xcb] matches
accented E characters in both cases. In UTF modes, PCRE supports the
concept of case for characters with values greater than 128 only when
it is compiled with Unicode property support.
The character escape sequences \d, \D, \h, \H, \p, \P, \s, \S, \v, \V,
\w, and \W may appear in a character class, and add the characters that
they match to the class. For example, [\dABCDEF] matches any hexadeci-
mal digit. In UTF modes, the PCRE_UCP option affects the meanings of
\d, \s, \w and their upper case partners, just as it does when they
appear outside a character class, as described in the section entitled
"Generic character types" above. The escape sequence \b has a different
meaning inside a character class; it matches the backspace character.
The sequences \B, \N, \R, and \X are not special inside a character
class. Like any other unrecognized escape sequences, they are treated
as the literal characters "B", "N", "R", and "X" by default, but cause
an error if the PCRE_EXTRA option is set.
A circumflex can conveniently be used with the upper case character
types to specify a more restricted set of characters than the matching
lower case type. For example, the class [^\W_] matches any letter or
digit, but not underscore, whereas [\w] includes underscore. A positive
character class should be read as "something OR something OR ..." and a
negative class as "NOT something AND NOT something AND NOT ...".
The only metacharacters that are recognized in character classes are
backslash, hyphen (only where it can be interpreted as specifying a
range), circumflex (only at the start), opening square bracket (only
when it can be interpreted as introducing a POSIX class name, or for a
special compatibility feature - see the next two sections), and the
terminating closing square bracket. However, escaping other non-
alphanumeric characters does no harm.
POSIX CHARACTER CLASSES
Perl supports the POSIX notation for character classes. This uses names
enclosed by [: and :] within the enclosing square brackets. PCRE also
supports this notation. For example,
[01[:alpha:]%]
matches "0", "1", any alphabetic character, or "%". The supported class
names are:
alnum letters and digits
alpha letters
ascii character codes 0 - 127
blank space or tab only
cntrl control characters
digit decimal digits (same as \d)
graph printing characters, excluding space
lower lower case letters
print printing characters, including space
punct printing characters, excluding letters and digits and space
space white space (the same as \s from PCRE 8.34)
upper upper case letters
word "word" characters (same as \w)
xdigit hexadecimal digits
The default "space" characters are HT (9), LF (10), VT (11), FF (12),
CR (13), and space (32). If locale-specific matching is taking place,
the list of space characters may be different; there may be fewer or
more of them. "Space" used to be different to \s, which did not include
VT, for Perl compatibility. However, Perl changed at release 5.18, and
PCRE followed at release 8.34. "Space" and \s now match the same set
of characters.
The name "word" is a Perl extension, and "blank" is a GNU extension
from Perl 5.8. Another Perl extension is negation, which is indicated
by a ^ character after the colon. For example,
[12[:^digit:]]
matches "1", "2", or any non-digit. PCRE (and Perl) also recognize the
POSIX syntax [.ch.] and [=ch=] where "ch" is a "collating element", but
these are not supported, and an error is given if they are encountered.
By default, characters with values greater than 128 do not match any of
the POSIX character classes. However, if the PCRE_UCP option is passed
to pcre_compile(), some of the classes are changed so that Unicode
character properties are used. This is achieved by replacing certain
POSIX classes by other sequences, as follows:
[:alnum:] becomes \p{Xan}
[:alpha:] becomes \p{L}
[:blank:] becomes \h
[:digit:] becomes \p{Nd}
[:lower:] becomes \p{Ll}
[:space:] becomes \p{Xps}
[:upper:] becomes \p{Lu}
[:word:] becomes \p{Xwd}
Negated versions, such as [:^alpha:] use \P instead of \p. Three other
POSIX classes are handled specially in UCP mode:
[:graph:] This matches characters that have glyphs that mark the page
when printed. In Unicode property terms, it matches all char-
acters with the L, M, N, P, S, or Cf properties, except for:
U+061C Arabic Letter Mark
U+180E Mongolian Vowel Separator
U+2066 - U+2069 Various "isolate"s
[:print:] This matches the same characters as [:graph:] plus space
characters that are not controls, that is, characters with
the Zs property.
[:punct:] This matches all characters that have the Unicode P (punctua-
tion) property, plus those characters whose code points are
less than 128 that have the S (Symbol) property.
The other POSIX classes are unchanged, and match only characters with
code points less than 128.
COMPATIBILITY FEATURE FOR WORD BOUNDARIES
In the POSIX.2 compliant library that was included in 4.4BSD Unix, the
ugly syntax [[:<:]] and [[:>:]] is used for matching "start of word"
and "end of word". PCRE treats these items as follows:
[[:<:]] is converted to \b(?=\w)
[[:>:]] is converted to \b(?<=\w)
Only these exact character sequences are recognized. A sequence such as
[a[:<:]b] provokes error for an unrecognized POSIX class name. This
support is not compatible with Perl. It is provided to help migrations
from other environments, and is best not used in any new patterns. Note
that \b matches at the start and the end of a word (see "Simple asser-
tions" above), and in a Perl-style pattern the preceding or following
character normally shows which is wanted, without the need for the
assertions that are used above in order to give exactly the POSIX be-
haviour.
VERTICAL BAR
Vertical bar characters are used to separate alternative patterns. For
example, the pattern
gilbert|sullivan
matches either "gilbert" or "sullivan". Any number of alternatives may
appear, and an empty alternative is permitted (matching the empty
string). The matching process tries each alternative in turn, from left
to right, and the first one that succeeds is used. If the alternatives
are within a subpattern (defined below), "succeeds" means matching the
rest of the main pattern as well as the alternative in the subpattern.
INTERNAL OPTION SETTING
The settings of the PCRE_CASELESS, PCRE_MULTILINE, PCRE_DOTALL, and
PCRE_EXTENDED options (which are Perl-compatible) can be changed from
within the pattern by a sequence of Perl option letters enclosed
between "(?" and ")". The option letters are
i for PCRE_CASELESS
m for PCRE_MULTILINE
s for PCRE_DOTALL
x for PCRE_EXTENDED
For example, (?im) sets caseless, multiline matching. It is also possi-
ble to unset these options by preceding the letter with a hyphen, and a
combined setting and unsetting such as (?im-sx), which sets PCRE_CASE-
LESS and PCRE_MULTILINE while unsetting PCRE_DOTALL and PCRE_EXTENDED,
is also permitted. If a letter appears both before and after the
hyphen, the option is unset.
The PCRE-specific options PCRE_DUPNAMES, PCRE_UNGREEDY, and PCRE_EXTRA
can be changed in the same way as the Perl-compatible options by using
the characters J, U and X respectively.
When one of these option changes occurs at top level (that is, not
inside subpattern parentheses), the change applies to the remainder of
the pattern that follows. An option change within a subpattern (see
below for a description of subpatterns) affects only that part of the
subpattern that follows it, so
(a(?i)b)c
matches abc and aBc and no other strings (assuming PCRE_CASELESS is not
used). By this means, options can be made to have different settings
in different parts of the pattern. Any changes made in one alternative
do carry on into subsequent branches within the same subpattern. For
example,
(a(?i)b|c)
matches "ab", "aB", "c", and "C", even though when matching "C" the
first branch is abandoned before the option setting. This is because
the effects of option settings happen at compile time. There would be
some very weird behaviour otherwise.
Note: There are other PCRE-specific options that can be set by the
application when the compiling or matching functions are called. In
some cases the pattern can contain special leading sequences such as
(*CRLF) to override what the application has set or what has been
defaulted. Details are given in the section entitled "Newline
sequences" above. There are also the (*UTF8), (*UTF16),(*UTF32), and
(*UCP) leading sequences that can be used to set UTF and Unicode prop-
erty modes; they are equivalent to setting the PCRE_UTF8, PCRE_UTF16,
PCRE_UTF32 and the PCRE_UCP options, respectively. The (*UTF) sequence
is a generic version that can be used with any of the libraries. How-
ever, the application can set the PCRE_NEVER_UTF option, which locks
out the use of the (*UTF) sequences.
SUBPATTERNS
Subpatterns are delimited by parentheses (round brackets), which can be
nested. Turning part of a pattern into a subpattern does two things:
1. It localizes a set of alternatives. For example, the pattern
cat(aract|erpillar|)
matches "cataract", "caterpillar", or "cat". Without the parentheses,
it would match "cataract", "erpillar" or an empty string.
2. It sets up the subpattern as a capturing subpattern. This means
that, when the whole pattern matches, that portion of the subject
string that matched the subpattern is passed back to the caller via the
ovector argument of the matching function. (This applies only to the
traditional matching functions; the DFA matching functions do not sup-
port capturing.)
Opening parentheses are counted from left to right (starting from 1) to
obtain numbers for the capturing subpatterns. For example, if the
string "the red king" is matched against the pattern
the ((red|white) (king|queen))
the captured substrings are "red king", "red", and "king", and are num-
bered 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
The fact that plain parentheses fulfil two functions is not always
helpful. There are often times when a grouping subpattern is required
without a capturing requirement. If an opening parenthesis is followed
by a question mark and a colon, the subpattern does not do any captur-
ing, and is not counted when computing the number of any subsequent
capturing subpatterns. For example, if the string "the white queen" is
matched against the pattern
the ((?:red|white) (king|queen))
the captured substrings are "white queen" and "queen", and are numbered
1 and 2. The maximum number of capturing subpatterns is 65535.
As a convenient shorthand, if any option settings are required at the
start of a non-capturing subpattern, the option letters may appear
between the "?" and the ":". Thus the two patterns
(?i:saturday|sunday)
(?:(?i)saturday|sunday)
match exactly the same set of strings. Because alternative branches are
tried from left to right, and options are not reset until the end of
the subpattern is reached, an option setting in one branch does affect
subsequent branches, so the above patterns match "SUNDAY" as well as
"Saturday".
DUPLICATE SUBPATTERN NUMBERS
Perl 5.10 introduced a feature whereby each alternative in a subpattern
uses the same numbers for its capturing parentheses. Such a subpattern
starts with (?| and is itself a non-capturing subpattern. For example,
consider this pattern:
(?|(Sat)ur|(Sun))day
Because the two alternatives are inside a (?| group, both sets of cap-
turing parentheses are numbered one. Thus, when the pattern matches,
you can look at captured substring number one, whichever alternative
matched. This construct is useful when you want to capture part, but
not all, of one of a number of alternatives. Inside a (?| group, paren-
theses are numbered as usual, but the number is reset at the start of
each branch. The numbers of any capturing parentheses that follow the
subpattern start after the highest number used in any branch. The fol-
lowing example is taken from the Perl documentation. The numbers under-
neath show in which buffer the captured content will be stored.
# before ---------------branch-reset----------- after
/ ( a ) (?| x ( y ) z | (p (q) r) | (t) u (v) ) ( z ) /x
# 1 2 2 3 2 3 4
A back reference to a numbered subpattern uses the most recent value
that is set for that number by any subpattern. The following pattern
matches "abcabc" or "defdef":
/(?|(abc)|(def))\1/
In contrast, a subroutine call to a numbered subpattern always refers
to the first one in the pattern with the given number. The following
pattern matches "abcabc" or "defabc":
/(?|(abc)|(def))(?1)/
If a condition test for a subpattern's having matched refers to a non-
unique number, the test is true if any of the subpatterns of that num-
ber have matched.
An alternative approach to using this "branch reset" feature is to use
duplicate named subpatterns, as described in the next section.
NAMED SUBPATTERNS
Identifying capturing parentheses by number is simple, but it can be
very hard to keep track of the numbers in complicated regular expres-
sions. Furthermore, if an expression is modified, the numbers may
change. To help with this difficulty, PCRE supports the naming of sub-
patterns. This feature was not added to Perl until release 5.10. Python
had the feature earlier, and PCRE introduced it at release 4.0, using
the Python syntax. PCRE now supports both the Perl and the Python syn-
tax. Perl allows identically numbered subpatterns to have different
names, but PCRE does not.
In PCRE, a subpattern can be named in one of three ways: (?<name>...)
or (?'name'...) as in Perl, or (?P<name>...) as in Python. References
to capturing parentheses from other parts of the pattern, such as back
references, recursion, and conditions, can be made by name as well as
by number.
Names consist of up to 32 alphanumeric characters and underscores, but
must start with a non-digit. Named capturing parentheses are still
allocated numbers as well as names, exactly as if the names were not
present. The PCRE API provides function calls for extracting the name-
to-number translation table from a compiled pattern. There is also a
convenience function for extracting a captured substring by name.
By default, a name must be unique within a pattern, but it is possible
to relax this constraint by setting the PCRE_DUPNAMES option at compile
time. (Duplicate names are also always permitted for subpatterns with
the same number, set up as described in the previous section.) Dupli-
cate names can be useful for patterns where only one instance of the
named parentheses can match. Suppose you want to match the name of a
weekday, either as a 3-letter abbreviation or as the full name, and in
both cases you want to extract the abbreviation. This pattern (ignoring
the line breaks) does the job:
(?<DN>Mon|Fri|Sun)(?:day)?|
(?<DN>Tue)(?:sday)?|
(?<DN>Wed)(?:nesday)?|
(?<DN>Thu)(?:rsday)?|
(?<DN>Sat)(?:urday)?
There are five capturing substrings, but only one is ever set after a
match. (An alternative way of solving this problem is to use a "branch
reset" subpattern, as described in the previous section.)
The convenience function for extracting the data by name returns the
substring for the first (and in this example, the only) subpattern of
that name that matched. This saves searching to find which numbered
subpattern it was.
If you make a back reference to a non-unique named subpattern from
elsewhere in the pattern, the subpatterns to which the name refers are
checked in the order in which they appear in the overall pattern. The
first one that is set is used for the reference. For example, this pat-
tern matches both "foofoo" and "barbar" but not "foobar" or "barfoo":
(?:(?<n>foo)|(?<n>bar))\k<n>
If you make a subroutine call to a non-unique named subpattern, the one
that corresponds to the first occurrence of the name is used. In the
absence of duplicate numbers (see the previous section) this is the one
with the lowest number.
If you use a named reference in a condition test (see the section about
conditions below), either to check whether a subpattern has matched, or
to check for recursion, all subpatterns with the same name are tested.
If the condition is true for any one of them, the overall condition is
true. This is the same behaviour as testing by number. For further
details of the interfaces for handling named subpatterns, see the
pcreapi documentation.
Warning: You cannot use different names to distinguish between two sub-
patterns with the same number because PCRE uses only the numbers when
matching. For this reason, an error is given at compile time if differ-
ent names are given to subpatterns with the same number. However, you
can always give the same name to subpatterns with the same number, even
when PCRE_DUPNAMES is not set.
REPETITION
Repetition is specified by quantifiers, which can follow any of the
following items:
a literal data character
the dot metacharacter
the \C escape sequence
the \X escape sequence
the \R escape sequence
an escape such as \d or \pL that matches a single character
a character class
a back reference (see next section)
a parenthesized subpattern (including assertions)
a subroutine call to a subpattern (recursive or otherwise)
The general repetition quantifier specifies a minimum and maximum num-
ber of permitted matches, by giving the two numbers in curly brackets
(braces), separated by a comma. The numbers must be less than 65536,
and the first must be less than or equal to the second. For example:
z{2,4}
matches "zz", "zzz", or "zzzz". A closing brace on its own is not a
special character. If the second number is omitted, but the comma is
present, there is no upper limit; if the second number and the comma
are both omitted, the quantifier specifies an exact number of required
matches. Thus
[aeiou]{3,}
matches at least 3 successive vowels, but may match many more, while
\d{8}
matches exactly 8 digits. An opening curly bracket that appears in a
position where a quantifier is not allowed, or one that does not match
the syntax of a quantifier, is taken as a literal character. For exam-
ple, {,6} is not a quantifier, but a literal string of four characters.
In UTF modes, quantifiers apply to characters rather than to individual
data units. Thus, for example, \x{100}{2} matches two characters, each
of which is represented by a two-byte sequence in a UTF-8 string. Simi-
larly, \X{3} matches three Unicode extended grapheme clusters, each of
which may be several data units long (and they may be of different
lengths).
The quantifier {0} is permitted, causing the expression to behave as if
the previous item and the quantifier were not present. This may be use-
ful for subpatterns that are referenced as subroutines from elsewhere
in the pattern (but see also the section entitled "Defining subpatterns
for use by reference only" below). Items other than subpatterns that
have a {0} quantifier are omitted from the compiled pattern.
For convenience, the three most common quantifiers have single-charac-
ter abbreviations:
* is equivalent to {0,}
+ is equivalent to {1,}
? is equivalent to {0,1}
It is possible to construct infinite loops by following a subpattern
that can match no characters with a quantifier that has no upper limit,
for example:
(a?)*
Earlier versions of Perl and PCRE used to give an error at compile time
for such patterns. However, because there are cases where this can be
useful, such patterns are now accepted, but if any repetition of the
subpattern does in fact match no characters, the loop is forcibly bro-
ken.
By default, the quantifiers are "greedy", that is, they match as much
as possible (up to the maximum number of permitted times), without
causing the rest of the pattern to fail. The classic example of where
this gives problems is in trying to match comments in C programs. These
appear between /* and */ and within the comment, individual * and /
characters may appear. An attempt to match C comments by applying the
pattern
/\*.*\*/
to the string
/* first comment */ not comment /* second comment */
fails, because it matches the entire string owing to the greediness of
the .* item.
However, if a quantifier is followed by a question mark, it ceases to
be greedy, and instead matches the minimum number of times possible, so
the pattern
/\*.*?\*/
does the right thing with the C comments. The meaning of the various
quantifiers is not otherwise changed, just the preferred number of
matches. Do not confuse this use of question mark with its use as a
quantifier in its own right. Because it has two uses, it can sometimes
appear doubled, as in
\d??\d
which matches one digit by preference, but can match two if that is the
only way the rest of the pattern matches.
If the PCRE_UNGREEDY option is set (an option that is not available in
Perl), the quantifiers are not greedy by default, but individual ones
can be made greedy by following them with a question mark. In other
words, it inverts the default behaviour.
When a parenthesized subpattern is quantified with a minimum repeat
count that is greater than 1 or with a limited maximum, more memory is
required for the compiled pattern, in proportion to the size of the
minimum or maximum.
If a pattern starts with .* or .{0,} and the PCRE_DOTALL option (equiv-
alent to Perl's /s) is set, thus allowing the dot to match newlines,
the pattern is implicitly anchored, because whatever follows will be
tried against every character position in the subject string, so there
is no point in retrying the overall match at any position after the
first. PCRE normally treats such a pattern as though it were preceded
by \A.
In cases where it is known that the subject string contains no new-
lines, it is worth setting PCRE_DOTALL in order to obtain this opti-
mization, or alternatively using ^ to indicate anchoring explicitly.
However, there are some cases where the optimization cannot be used.
When .* is inside capturing parentheses that are the subject of a back
reference elsewhere in the pattern, a match at the start may fail where
a later one succeeds. Consider, for example:
(.*)abc\1
If the subject is "xyz123abc123" the match point is the fourth charac-
ter. For this reason, such a pattern is not implicitly anchored.
Another case where implicit anchoring is not applied is when the lead-
ing .* is inside an atomic group. Once again, a match at the start may
fail where a later one succeeds. Consider this pattern:
(?>.*?a)b
It matches "ab" in the subject "aab". The use of the backtracking con-
trol verbs (*PRUNE) and (*SKIP) also disable this optimization.
When a capturing subpattern is repeated, the value captured is the sub-
string that matched the final iteration. For example, after
(tweedle[dume]{3}\s*)+
has matched "tweedledum tweedledee" the value of the captured substring
is "tweedledee". However, if there are nested capturing subpatterns,
the corresponding captured values may have been set in previous itera-
tions. For example, after
/(a|(b))+/
matches "aba" the value of the second captured substring is "b".
ATOMIC GROUPING AND POSSESSIVE QUANTIFIERS
With both maximizing ("greedy") and minimizing ("ungreedy" or "lazy")
repetition, failure of what follows normally causes the repeated item
to be re-evaluated to see if a different number of repeats allows the
rest of the pattern to match. Sometimes it is useful to prevent this,
either to change the nature of the match, or to cause it fail earlier
than it otherwise might, when the author of the pattern knows there is
no point in carrying on.
Consider, for example, the pattern \d+foo when applied to the subject
line
123456bar
After matching all 6 digits and then failing to match "foo", the normal
action of the matcher is to try again with only 5 digits matching the
\d+ item, and then with 4, and so on, before ultimately failing.
"Atomic grouping" (a term taken from Jeffrey Friedl's book) provides
the means for specifying that once a subpattern has matched, it is not
to be re-evaluated in this way.
If we use atomic grouping for the previous example, the matcher gives
up immediately on failing to match "foo" the first time. The notation
is a kind of special parenthesis, starting with (?> as in this example:
(?>\d+)foo
This kind of parenthesis "locks up" the part of the pattern it con-
tains once it has matched, and a failure further into the pattern is
prevented from backtracking into it. Backtracking past it to previous
items, however, works as normal.
An alternative description is that a subpattern of this type matches
the string of characters that an identical standalone pattern would
match, if anchored at the current point in the subject string.
Atomic grouping subpatterns are not capturing subpatterns. Simple cases
such as the above example can be thought of as a maximizing repeat that
must swallow everything it can. So, while both \d+ and \d+? are pre-
pared to adjust the number of digits they match in order to make the
rest of the pattern match, (?>\d+) can only match an entire sequence of
digits.
Atomic groups in general can of course contain arbitrarily complicated
subpatterns, and can be nested. However, when the subpattern for an
atomic group is just a single repeated item, as in the example above, a
simpler notation, called a "possessive quantifier" can be used. This
consists of an additional + character following a quantifier. Using
this notation, the previous example can be rewritten as
\d++foo
Note that a possessive quantifier can be used with an entire group, for
example:
(abc|xyz){2,3}+
Possessive quantifiers are always greedy; the setting of the
PCRE_UNGREEDY option is ignored. They are a convenient notation for the
simpler forms of atomic group. However, there is no difference in the
meaning of a possessive quantifier and the equivalent atomic group,
though there may be a performance difference; possessive quantifiers
should be slightly faster.
The possessive quantifier syntax is an extension to the Perl 5.8 syn-
tax. Jeffrey Friedl originated the idea (and the name) in the first
edition of his book. Mike McCloskey liked it, so implemented it when he
built Sun's Java package, and PCRE copied it from there. It ultimately
found its way into Perl at release 5.10.
PCRE has an optimization that automatically "possessifies" certain sim-
ple pattern constructs. For example, the sequence A+B is treated as
A++B because there is no point in backtracking into a sequence of A's
when B must follow.
When a pattern contains an unlimited repeat inside a subpattern that
can itself be repeated an unlimited number of times, the use of an
atomic group is the only way to avoid some failing matches taking a
very long time indeed. The pattern
(\D+|<\d+>)*[!?]
matches an unlimited number of substrings that either consist of non-
digits, or digits enclosed in <>, followed by either ! or ?. When it
matches, it runs quickly. However, if it is applied to
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
it takes a long time before reporting failure. This is because the
string can be divided between the internal \D+ repeat and the external
* repeat in a large number of ways, and all have to be tried. (The
example uses [!?] rather than a single character at the end, because
both PCRE and Perl have an optimization that allows for fast failure
when a single character is used. They remember the last single charac-
ter that is required for a match, and fail early if it is not present
in the string.) If the pattern is changed so that it uses an atomic
group, like this:
((?>\D+)|<\d+>)*[!?]
sequences of non-digits cannot be broken, and failure happens quickly.
BACK REFERENCES
Outside a character class, a backslash followed by a digit greater than
0 (and possibly further digits) is a back reference to a capturing sub-
pattern earlier (that is, to its left) in the pattern, provided there
have been that many previous capturing left parentheses.
However, if the decimal number following the backslash is less than 10,
it is always taken as a back reference, and causes an error only if
there are not that many capturing left parentheses in the entire pat-
tern. In other words, the parentheses that are referenced need not be
to the left of the reference for numbers less than 10. A "forward back
reference" of this type can make sense when a repetition is involved
and the subpattern to the right has participated in an earlier itera-
tion.
It is not possible to have a numerical "forward back reference" to a
subpattern whose number is 10 or more using this syntax because a
sequence such as \50 is interpreted as a character defined in octal.
See the subsection entitled "Non-printing characters" above for further
details of the handling of digits following a backslash. There is no
such problem when named parentheses are used. A back reference to any
subpattern is possible using named parentheses (see below).
Another way of avoiding the ambiguity inherent in the use of digits
following a backslash is to use the \g escape sequence. This escape
must be followed by an unsigned number or a negative number, optionally
enclosed in braces. These examples are all identical:
(ring), \1
(ring), \g1
(ring), \g{1}
An unsigned number specifies an absolute reference without the ambigu-
ity that is present in the older syntax. It is also useful when literal
digits follow the reference. A negative number is a relative reference.
Consider this example:
(abc(def)ghi)\g{-1}
The sequence \g{-1} is a reference to the most recently started captur-
ing subpattern before \g, that is, is it equivalent to \2 in this exam-
ple. Similarly, \g{-2} would be equivalent to \1. The use of relative
references can be helpful in long patterns, and also in patterns that
are created by joining together fragments that contain references
within themselves.
A back reference matches whatever actually matched the capturing sub-
pattern in the current subject string, rather than anything matching
the subpattern itself (see "Subpatterns as subroutines" below for a way
of doing that). So the pattern
(sens|respons)e and \1ibility
matches "sense and sensibility" and "response and responsibility", but
not "sense and responsibility". If caseful matching is in force at the
time of the back reference, the case of letters is relevant. For exam-
ple,
((?i)rah)\s+\1
matches "rah rah" and "RAH RAH", but not "RAH rah", even though the
original capturing subpattern is matched caselessly.
There are several different ways of writing back references to named
subpatterns. The .NET syntax \k{name} and the Perl syntax \k<name> or
\k'name' are supported, as is the Python syntax (?P=name). Perl 5.10's
unified back reference syntax, in which \g can be used for both numeric
and named references, is also supported. We could rewrite the above
example in any of the following ways:
(?<p1>(?i)rah)\s+\k<p1>
(?'p1'(?i)rah)\s+\k{p1}
(?P<p1>(?i)rah)\s+(?P=p1)
(?<p1>(?i)rah)\s+\g{p1}
A subpattern that is referenced by name may appear in the pattern
before or after the reference.
There may be more than one back reference to the same subpattern. If a
subpattern has not actually been used in a particular match, any back
references to it always fail by default. For example, the pattern
(a|(bc))\2
always fails if it starts to match "a" rather than "bc". However, if
the PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT option is set at compile time, a back refer-
ence to an unset value matches an empty string.
Because there may be many capturing parentheses in a pattern, all dig-
its following a backslash are taken as part of a potential back refer-
ence number. If the pattern continues with a digit character, some
delimiter must be used to terminate the back reference. If the
PCRE_EXTENDED option is set, this can be white space. Otherwise, the
\g{ syntax or an empty comment (see "Comments" below) can be used.
Recursive back references
A back reference that occurs inside the parentheses to which it refers
fails when the subpattern is first used, so, for example, (a\1) never
matches. However, such references can be useful inside repeated sub-
patterns. For example, the pattern
(a|b\1)+
matches any number of "a"s and also "aba", "ababbaa" etc. At each iter-
ation of the subpattern, the back reference matches the character
string corresponding to the previous iteration. In order for this to
work, the pattern must be such that the first iteration does not need
to match the back reference. This can be done using alternation, as in
the example above, or by a quantifier with a minimum of zero.
Back references of this type cause the group that they reference to be
treated as an atomic group. Once the whole group has been matched, a
subsequent matching failure cannot cause backtracking into the middle
of the group.
ASSERTIONS
An assertion is a test on the characters following or preceding the
current matching point that does not actually consume any characters.
The simple assertions coded as \b, \B, \A, \G, \Z, \z, ^ and $ are
described above.
More complicated assertions are coded as subpatterns. There are two
kinds: those that look ahead of the current position in the subject
string, and those that look behind it. An assertion subpattern is
matched in the normal way, except that it does not cause the current
matching position to be changed.
Assertion subpatterns are not capturing subpatterns. If such an asser-
tion contains capturing subpatterns within it, these are counted for
the purposes of numbering the capturing subpatterns in the whole pat-
tern. However, substring capturing is carried out only for positive
assertions. (Perl sometimes, but not always, does do capturing in nega-
tive assertions.)
WARNING: If a positive assertion containing one or more capturing sub-
patterns succeeds, but failure to match later in the pattern causes
backtracking over this assertion, the captures within the assertion are
reset only if no higher numbered captures are already set. This is,
unfortunately, a fundamental limitation of the current implementation,
and as PCRE1 is now in maintenance-only status, it is unlikely ever to
change.
For compatibility with Perl, assertion subpatterns may be repeated;
though it makes no sense to assert the same thing several times, the
side effect of capturing parentheses may occasionally be useful. In
practice, there only three cases:
(1) If the quantifier is {0}, the assertion is never obeyed during
matching. However, it may contain internal capturing parenthesized
groups that are called from elsewhere via the subroutine mechanism.
(2) If quantifier is {0,n} where n is greater than zero, it is treated
as if it were {0,1}. At run time, the rest of the pattern match is
tried with and without the assertion, the order depending on the greed-
iness of the quantifier.
(3) If the minimum repetition is greater than zero, the quantifier is
ignored. The assertion is obeyed just once when encountered during
matching.
Lookahead assertions
Lookahead assertions start with (?= for positive assertions and (?! for
negative assertions. For example,
\w+(?=;)
matches a word followed by a semicolon, but does not include the semi-
colon in the match, and
foo(?!bar)
matches any occurrence of "foo" that is not followed by "bar". Note
that the apparently similar pattern
(?!foo)bar
does not find an occurrence of "bar" that is preceded by something
other than "foo"; it finds any occurrence of "bar" whatsoever, because
the assertion (?!foo) is always true when the next three characters are
"bar". A lookbehind assertion is needed to achieve the other effect.
If you want to force a matching failure at some point in a pattern, the
most convenient way to do it is with (?!) because an empty string
always matches, so an assertion that requires there not to be an empty
string must always fail. The backtracking control verb (*FAIL) or (*F)
is a synonym for (?!).
Lookbehind assertions
Lookbehind assertions start with (?<= for positive assertions and (?<!
for negative assertions. For example,
(?<!foo)bar
does find an occurrence of "bar" that is not preceded by "foo". The
contents of a lookbehind assertion are restricted such that all the
strings it matches must have a fixed length. However, if there are sev-
eral top-level alternatives, they do not all have to have the same
fixed length. Thus
(?<=bullock|donkey)
is permitted, but
(?<!dogs?|cats?)
causes an error at compile time. Branches that match different length
strings are permitted only at the top level of a lookbehind assertion.
This is an extension compared with Perl, which requires all branches to
match the same length of string. An assertion such as
(?<=ab(c|de))
is not permitted, because its single top-level branch can match two
different lengths, but it is acceptable to PCRE if rewritten to use two
top-level branches:
(?<=abc|abde)
In some cases, the escape sequence \K (see above) can be used instead
of a lookbehind assertion to get round the fixed-length restriction.
The implementation of lookbehind assertions is, for each alternative,
to temporarily move the current position back by the fixed length and
then try to match. If there are insufficient characters before the cur-
rent position, the assertion fails.
In a UTF mode, PCRE does not allow the \C escape (which matches a sin-
gle data unit even in a UTF mode) to appear in lookbehind assertions,
because it makes it impossible to calculate the length of the lookbe-
hind. The \X and \R escapes, which can match different numbers of data
units, are also not permitted.
"Subroutine" calls (see below) such as (?2) or (?&X) are permitted in
lookbehinds, as long as the subpattern matches a fixed-length string.
Recursion, however, is not supported.
Possessive quantifiers can be used in conjunction with lookbehind
assertions to specify efficient matching of fixed-length strings at the
end of subject strings. Consider a simple pattern such as
abcd$
when applied to a long string that does not match. Because matching
proceeds from left to right, PCRE will look for each "a" in the subject
and then see if what follows matches the rest of the pattern. If the
pattern is specified as
^.*abcd$
the initial .* matches the entire string at first, but when this fails
(because there is no following "a"), it backtracks to match all but the
last character, then all but the last two characters, and so on. Once
again the search for "a" covers the entire string, from right to left,
so we are no better off. However, if the pattern is written as
^.*+(?<=abcd)
there can be no backtracking for the .*+ item; it can match only the
entire string. The subsequent lookbehind assertion does a single test
on the last four characters. If it fails, the match fails immediately.
For long strings, this approach makes a significant difference to the
processing time.
Using multiple assertions
Several assertions (of any sort) may occur in succession. For example,
(?<=\d{3})(?<!999)foo
matches "foo" preceded by three digits that are not "999". Notice that
each of the assertions is applied independently at the same point in
the subject string. First there is a check that the previous three
characters are all digits, and then there is a check that the same
three characters are not "999". This pattern does not match "foo" pre-
ceded by six characters, the first of which are digits and the last
three of which are not "999". For example, it doesn't match "123abc-
foo". A pattern to do that is
(?<=\d{3}...)(?<!999)foo
This time the first assertion looks at the preceding six characters,
checking that the first three are digits, and then the second assertion
checks that the preceding three characters are not "999".
Assertions can be nested in any combination. For example,
(?<=(?<!foo)bar)baz
matches an occurrence of "baz" that is preceded by "bar" which in turn
is not preceded by "foo", while
(?<=\d{3}(?!999)...)foo
is another pattern that matches "foo" preceded by three digits and any
three characters that are not "999".
CONDITIONAL SUBPATTERNS
It is possible to cause the matching process to obey a subpattern con-
ditionally or to choose between two alternative subpatterns, depending
on the result of an assertion, or whether a specific capturing subpat-
tern has already been matched. The two possible forms of conditional
subpattern are:
(?(condition)yes-pattern)
(?(condition)yes-pattern|no-pattern)
If the condition is satisfied, the yes-pattern is used; otherwise the
no-pattern (if present) is used. If there are more than two alterna-
tives in the subpattern, a compile-time error occurs. Each of the two
alternatives may itself contain nested subpatterns of any form, includ-
ing conditional subpatterns; the restriction to two alternatives
applies only at the level of the condition. This pattern fragment is an
example where the alternatives are complex:
(?(1) (A|B|C) | (D | (?(2)E|F) | E) )
There are four kinds of condition: references to subpatterns, refer-
ences to recursion, a pseudo-condition called DEFINE, and assertions.
Checking for a used subpattern by number
If the text between the parentheses consists of a sequence of digits,
the condition is true if a capturing subpattern of that number has pre-
viously matched. If there is more than one capturing subpattern with
the same number (see the earlier section about duplicate subpattern
numbers), the condition is true if any of them have matched. An alter-
native notation is to precede the digits with a plus or minus sign. In
this case, the subpattern number is relative rather than absolute. The
most recently opened parentheses can be referenced by (?(-1), the next
most recent by (?(-2), and so on. Inside loops it can also make sense
to refer to subsequent groups. The next parentheses to be opened can be
referenced as (?(+1), and so on. (The value zero in any of these forms
is not used; it provokes a compile-time error.)
Consider the following pattern, which contains non-significant white
space to make it more readable (assume the PCRE_EXTENDED option) and to
divide it into three parts for ease of discussion:
( \( )? [^()]+ (?(1) \) )
The first part matches an optional opening parenthesis, and if that
character is present, sets it as the first captured substring. The sec-
ond part matches one or more characters that are not parentheses. The
third part is a conditional subpattern that tests whether or not the
first set of parentheses matched. If they did, that is, if subject
started with an opening parenthesis, the condition is true, and so the
yes-pattern is executed and a closing parenthesis is required. Other-
wise, since no-pattern is not present, the subpattern matches nothing.
In other words, this pattern matches a sequence of non-parentheses,
optionally enclosed in parentheses.
If you were embedding this pattern in a larger one, you could use a
relative reference:
...other stuff... ( \( )? [^()]+ (?(-1) \) ) ...
This makes the fragment independent of the parentheses in the larger
pattern.
Checking for a used subpattern by name
Perl uses the syntax (?(<name>)...) or (?('name')...) to test for a
used subpattern by name. For compatibility with earlier versions of
PCRE, which had this facility before Perl, the syntax (?(name)...) is
also recognized.
Rewriting the above example to use a named subpattern gives this:
(?<OPEN> \( )? [^()]+ (?(<OPEN>) \) )
If the name used in a condition of this kind is a duplicate, the test
is applied to all subpatterns of the same name, and is true if any one
of them has matched.
Checking for pattern recursion
If the condition is the string (R), and there is no subpattern with the
name R, the condition is true if a recursive call to the whole pattern
or any subpattern has been made. If digits or a name preceded by amper-
sand follow the letter R, for example:
(?(R3)...) or (?(R&name)...)
the condition is true if the most recent recursion is into a subpattern
whose number or name is given. This condition does not check the entire
recursion stack. If the name used in a condition of this kind is a
duplicate, the test is applied to all subpatterns of the same name, and
is true if any one of them is the most recent recursion.
At "top level", all these recursion test conditions are false. The
syntax for recursive patterns is described below.
Defining subpatterns for use by reference only
If the condition is the string (DEFINE), and there is no subpattern
with the name DEFINE, the condition is always false. In this case,
there may be only one alternative in the subpattern. It is always
skipped if control reaches this point in the pattern; the idea of
DEFINE is that it can be used to define subroutines that can be refer-
enced from elsewhere. (The use of subroutines is described below.) For
example, a pattern to match an IPv4 address such as "192.168.23.245"
could be written like this (ignore white space and line breaks):
(?(DEFINE) (?<byte> 2[0-4]\d | 25[0-5] | 1\d\d | [1-9]?\d) )
\b (?&byte) (\.(?&byte)){3} \b
The first part of the pattern is a DEFINE group inside which a another
group named "byte" is defined. This matches an individual component of
an IPv4 address (a number less than 256). When matching takes place,
this part of the pattern is skipped because DEFINE acts like a false
condition. The rest of the pattern uses references to the named group
to match the four dot-separated components of an IPv4 address, insist-
ing on a word boundary at each end.
Assertion conditions
If the condition is not in any of the above formats, it must be an
assertion. This may be a positive or negative lookahead or lookbehind
assertion. Consider this pattern, again containing non-significant
white space, and with the two alternatives on the second line:
(?(?=[^a-z]*[a-z])
\d{2}-[a-z]{3}-\d{2} | \d{2}-\d{2}-\d{2} )
The condition is a positive lookahead assertion that matches an
optional sequence of non-letters followed by a letter. In other words,
it tests for the presence of at least one letter in the subject. If a
letter is found, the subject is matched against the first alternative;
otherwise it is matched against the second. This pattern matches
strings in one of the two forms dd-aaa-dd or dd-dd-dd, where aaa are
letters and dd are digits.
COMMENTS
There are two ways of including comments in patterns that are processed
by PCRE. In both cases, the start of the comment must not be in a char-
acter class, nor in the middle of any other sequence of related charac-
ters such as (?: or a subpattern name or number. The characters that
make up a comment play no part in the pattern matching.
The sequence (?# marks the start of a comment that continues up to the
next closing parenthesis. Nested parentheses are not permitted. If the
PCRE_EXTENDED option is set, an unescaped # character also introduces a
comment, which in this case continues to immediately after the next
newline character or character sequence in the pattern. Which charac-
ters are interpreted as newlines is controlled by the options passed to
a compiling function or by a special sequence at the start of the pat-
tern, as described in the section entitled "Newline conventions" above.
Note that the end of this type of comment is a literal newline sequence
in the pattern; escape sequences that happen to represent a newline do
not count. For example, consider this pattern when PCRE_EXTENDED is
set, and the default newline convention is in force:
abc #comment \n still comment
On encountering the # character, pcre_compile() skips along, looking
for a newline in the pattern. The sequence \n is still literal at this
stage, so it does not terminate the comment. Only an actual character
with the code value 0x0a (the default newline) does so.
RECURSIVE PATTERNS
Consider the problem of matching a string in parentheses, allowing for
unlimited nested parentheses. Without the use of recursion, the best
that can be done is to use a pattern that matches up to some fixed
depth of nesting. It is not possible to handle an arbitrary nesting
depth.
For some time, Perl has provided a facility that allows regular expres-
sions to recurse (amongst other things). It does this by interpolating
Perl code in the expression at run time, and the code can refer to the
expression itself. A Perl pattern using code interpolation to solve the
parentheses problem can be created like this:
$re = qr{\( (?: (?>[^()]+) | (?p{$re}) )* \)}x;
The (?p{...}) item interpolates Perl code at run time, and in this case
refers recursively to the pattern in which it appears.
Obviously, PCRE cannot support the interpolation of Perl code. Instead,
it supports special syntax for recursion of the entire pattern, and
also for individual subpattern recursion. After its introduction in
PCRE and Python, this kind of recursion was subsequently introduced
into Perl at release 5.10.
A special item that consists of (? followed by a number greater than
zero and a closing parenthesis is a recursive subroutine call of the
subpattern of the given number, provided that it occurs inside that
subpattern. (If not, it is a non-recursive subroutine call, which is
described in the next section.) The special item (?R) or (?0) is a
recursive call of the entire regular expression.
This PCRE pattern solves the nested parentheses problem (assume the
PCRE_EXTENDED option is set so that white space is ignored):
\( ( [^()]++ | (?R) )* \)
First it matches an opening parenthesis. Then it matches any number of
substrings which can either be a sequence of non-parentheses, or a
recursive match of the pattern itself (that is, a correctly parenthe-
sized substring). Finally there is a closing parenthesis. Note the use
of a possessive quantifier to avoid backtracking into sequences of non-
parentheses.
If this were part of a larger pattern, you would not want to recurse
the entire pattern, so instead you could use this:
( \( ( [^()]++ | (?1) )* \) )
We have put the pattern into parentheses, and caused the recursion to
refer to them instead of the whole pattern.
In a larger pattern, keeping track of parenthesis numbers can be
tricky. This is made easier by the use of relative references. Instead
of (?1) in the pattern above you can write (?-2) to refer to the second
most recently opened parentheses preceding the recursion. In other
words, a negative number counts capturing parentheses leftwards from
the point at which it is encountered.
It is also possible to refer to subsequently opened parentheses, by
writing references such as (?+2). However, these cannot be recursive
because the reference is not inside the parentheses that are refer-
enced. They are always non-recursive subroutine calls, as described in
the next section.
An alternative approach is to use named parentheses instead. The Perl
syntax for this is (?&name); PCRE's earlier syntax (?P>name) is also
supported. We could rewrite the above example as follows:
(?<pn> \( ( [^()]++ | (?&pn) )* \) )
If there is more than one subpattern with the same name, the earliest
one is used.
This particular example pattern that we have been looking at contains
nested unlimited repeats, and so the use of a possessive quantifier for
matching strings of non-parentheses is important when applying the pat-
tern to strings that do not match. For example, when this pattern is
applied to
(aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa()
it yields "no match" quickly. However, if a possessive quantifier is
not used, the match runs for a very long time indeed because there are
so many different ways the + and * repeats can carve up the subject,
and all have to be tested before failure can be reported.
At the end of a match, the values of capturing parentheses are those
from the outermost level. If you want to obtain intermediate values, a
callout function can be used (see below and the pcrecallout documenta-
tion). If the pattern above is matched against
(ab(cd)ef)
the value for the inner capturing parentheses (numbered 2) is "ef",
which is the last value taken on at the top level. If a capturing sub-
pattern is not matched at the top level, its final captured value is
unset, even if it was (temporarily) set at a deeper level during the
matching process.
If there are more than 15 capturing parentheses in a pattern, PCRE has
to obtain extra memory to store data during a recursion, which it does
by using pcre_malloc, freeing it via pcre_free afterwards. If no memory
can be obtained, the match fails with the PCRE_ERROR_NOMEMORY error.
Do not confuse the (?R) item with the condition (R), which tests for
recursion. Consider this pattern, which matches text in angle brack-
ets, allowing for arbitrary nesting. Only digits are allowed in nested
brackets (that is, when recursing), whereas any characters are permit-
ted at the outer level.
< (?: (?(R) \d++ | [^<>]*+) | (?R)) * >
In this pattern, (?(R) is the start of a conditional subpattern, with
two different alternatives for the recursive and non-recursive cases.
The (?R) item is the actual recursive call.
Differences in recursion processing between PCRE and Perl
Recursion processing in PCRE differs from Perl in two important ways.
In PCRE (like Python, but unlike Perl), a recursive subpattern call is
always treated as an atomic group. That is, once it has matched some of
the subject string, it is never re-entered, even if it contains untried
alternatives and there is a subsequent matching failure. This can be
illustrated by the following pattern, which purports to match a palin-
dromic string that contains an odd number of characters (for example,
"a", "aba", "abcba", "abcdcba"):
^(.|(.)(?1)\2)$
The idea is that it either matches a single character, or two identical
characters surrounding a sub-palindrome. In Perl, this pattern works;
in PCRE it does not if the pattern is longer than three characters.
Consider the subject string "abcba":
At the top level, the first character is matched, but as it is not at
the end of the string, the first alternative fails; the second alterna-
tive is taken and the recursion kicks in. The recursive call to subpat-
tern 1 successfully matches the next character ("b"). (Note that the
beginning and end of line tests are not part of the recursion).
Back at the top level, the next character ("c") is compared with what
subpattern 2 matched, which was "a". This fails. Because the recursion
is treated as an atomic group, there are now no backtracking points,
and so the entire match fails. (Perl is able, at this point, to re-
enter the recursion and try the second alternative.) However, if the
pattern is written with the alternatives in the other order, things are
different:
^((.)(?1)\2|.)$
This time, the recursing alternative is tried first, and continues to
recurse until it runs out of characters, at which point the recursion
fails. But this time we do have another alternative to try at the
higher level. That is the big difference: in the previous case the
remaining alternative is at a deeper recursion level, which PCRE cannot
use.
To change the pattern so that it matches all palindromic strings, not
just those with an odd number of characters, it is tempting to change
the pattern to this:
^((.)(?1)\2|.?)$
Again, this works in Perl, but not in PCRE, and for the same reason.
When a deeper recursion has matched a single character, it cannot be
entered again in order to match an empty string. The solution is to
separate the two cases, and write out the odd and even cases as alter-
natives at the higher level:
^(?:((.)(?1)\2|)|((.)(?3)\4|.))
If you want to match typical palindromic phrases, the pattern has to
ignore all non-word characters, which can be done like this:
^\W*+(?:((.)\W*+(?1)\W*+\2|)|((.)\W*+(?3)\W*+\4|\W*+.\W*+))\W*+$
If run with the PCRE_CASELESS option, this pattern matches phrases such
as "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!" and it works well in both PCRE and
Perl. Note the use of the possessive quantifier *+ to avoid backtrack-
ing into sequences of non-word characters. Without this, PCRE takes a
great deal longer (ten times or more) to match typical phrases, and
Perl takes so long that you think it has gone into a loop.
WARNING: The palindrome-matching patterns above work only if the sub-
ject string does not start with a palindrome that is shorter than the
entire string. For example, although "abcba" is correctly matched, if
the subject is "ababa", PCRE finds the palindrome "aba" at the start,
then fails at top level because the end of the string does not follow.
Once again, it cannot jump back into the recursion to try other alter-
natives, so the entire match fails.
The second way in which PCRE and Perl differ in their recursion pro-
cessing is in the handling of captured values. In Perl, when a subpat-
tern is called recursively or as a subpattern (see the next section),
it has no access to any values that were captured outside the recur-
sion, whereas in PCRE these values can be referenced. Consider this
pattern:
^(.)(\1|a(?2))
In PCRE, this pattern matches "bab". The first capturing parentheses
match "b", then in the second group, when the back reference \1 fails
to match "b", the second alternative matches "a" and then recurses. In
the recursion, \1 does now match "b" and so the whole match succeeds.
In Perl, the pattern fails to match because inside the recursive call
\1 cannot access the externally set value.
SUBPATTERNS AS SUBROUTINES
If the syntax for a recursive subpattern call (either by number or by
name) is used outside the parentheses to which it refers, it operates
like a subroutine in a programming language. The called subpattern may
be defined before or after the reference. A numbered reference can be
absolute or relative, as in these examples:
(...(absolute)...)...(?2)...
(...(relative)...)...(?-1)...
(...(?+1)...(relative)...
An earlier example pointed out that the pattern
(sens|respons)e and \1ibility
matches "sense and sensibility" and "response and responsibility", but
not "sense and responsibility". If instead the pattern
(sens|respons)e and (?1)ibility
is used, it does match "sense and responsibility" as well as the other
two strings. Another example is given in the discussion of DEFINE
above.
All subroutine calls, whether recursive or not, are always treated as
atomic groups. That is, once a subroutine has matched some of the sub-
ject string, it is never re-entered, even if it contains untried alter-
natives and there is a subsequent matching failure. Any capturing
parentheses that are set during the subroutine call revert to their
previous values afterwards.
Processing options such as case-independence are fixed when a subpat-
tern is defined, so if it is used as a subroutine, such options cannot
be changed for different calls. For example, consider this pattern:
(abc)(?i:(?-1))
It matches "abcabc". It does not match "abcABC" because the change of
processing option does not affect the called subpattern.
ONIGURUMA SUBROUTINE SYNTAX
For compatibility with Oniguruma, the non-Perl syntax \g followed by a
name or a number enclosed either in angle brackets or single quotes, is
an alternative syntax for referencing a subpattern as a subroutine,
possibly recursively. Here are two of the examples used above, rewrit-
ten using this syntax:
(?<pn> \( ( (?>[^()]+) | \g<pn> )* \) )
(sens|respons)e and \g'1'ibility
PCRE supports an extension to Oniguruma: if a number is preceded by a
plus or a minus sign it is taken as a relative reference. For example:
(abc)(?i:\g<-1>)
Note that \g{...} (Perl syntax) and \g<...> (Oniguruma syntax) are not
synonymous. The former is a back reference; the latter is a subroutine
call.
CALLOUTS
Perl has a feature whereby using the sequence (?{...}) causes arbitrary
Perl code to be obeyed in the middle of matching a regular expression.
This makes it possible, amongst other things, to extract different sub-
strings that match the same pair of parentheses when there is a repeti-
tion.
PCRE provides a similar feature, but of course it cannot obey arbitrary
Perl code. The feature is called "callout". The caller of PCRE provides
an external function by putting its entry point in the global variable
pcre_callout (8-bit library) or pcre[16|32]_callout (16-bit or 32-bit
library). By default, this variable contains NULL, which disables all
calling out.
Within a regular expression, (?C) indicates the points at which the
external function is to be called. If you want to identify different
callout points, you can put a number less than 256 after the letter C.
The default value is zero. For example, this pattern has two callout
points:
(?C1)abc(?C2)def
If the PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT flag is passed to a compiling function, call-
outs are automatically installed before each item in the pattern. They
are all numbered 255. If there is a conditional group in the pattern
whose condition is an assertion, an additional callout is inserted just
before the condition. An explicit callout may also be set at this posi-
tion, as in this example:
(?(?C9)(?=a)abc|def)
Note that this applies only to assertion conditions, not to other types
of condition.
During matching, when PCRE reaches a callout point, the external func-
tion is called. It is provided with the number of the callout, the
position in the pattern, and, optionally, one item of data originally
supplied by the caller of the matching function. The callout function
may cause matching to proceed, to backtrack, or to fail altogether.
By default, PCRE implements a number of optimizations at compile time
and matching time, and one side-effect is that sometimes callouts are
skipped. If you need all possible callouts to happen, you need to set
options that disable the relevant optimizations. More details, and a
complete description of the interface to the callout function, are
given in the pcrecallout documentation.
BACKTRACKING CONTROL
Perl 5.10 introduced a number of "Special Backtracking Control Verbs",
which are still described in the Perl documentation as "experimental
and subject to change or removal in a future version of Perl". It goes
on to say: "Their usage in production code should be noted to avoid
problems during upgrades." The same remarks apply to the PCRE features
described in this section.
The new verbs make use of what was previously invalid syntax: an open-
ing parenthesis followed by an asterisk. They are generally of the form
(*VERB) or (*VERB:NAME). Some may take either form, possibly behaving
differently depending on whether or not a name is present. A name is
any sequence of characters that does not include a closing parenthesis.
The maximum length of name is 255 in the 8-bit library and 65535 in the
16-bit and 32-bit libraries. If the name is empty, that is, if the
closing parenthesis immediately follows the colon, the effect is as if
the colon were not there. Any number of these verbs may occur in a
pattern.
Since these verbs are specifically related to backtracking, most of
them can be used only when the pattern is to be matched using one of
the traditional matching functions, because these use a backtracking
algorithm. With the exception of (*FAIL), which behaves like a failing
negative assertion, the backtracking control verbs cause an error if
encountered by a DFA matching function.
The behaviour of these verbs in repeated groups, assertions, and in
subpatterns called as subroutines (whether or not recursively) is docu-
mented below.
Optimizations that affect backtracking verbs
PCRE contains some optimizations that are used to speed up matching by
running some checks at the start of each match attempt. For example, it
may know the minimum length of matching subject, or that a particular
character must be present. When one of these optimizations bypasses the
running of a match, any included backtracking verbs will not, of
course, be processed. You can suppress the start-of-match optimizations
by setting the PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE option when calling pcre_com-
pile() or pcre_exec(), or by starting the pattern with (*NO_START_OPT).
There is more discussion of this option in the section entitled "Option
bits for pcre_exec()" in the pcreapi documentation.
Experiments with Perl suggest that it too has similar optimizations,
sometimes leading to anomalous results.
Verbs that act immediately
The following verbs act as soon as they are encountered. They may not
be followed by a name.
(*ACCEPT)
This verb causes the match to end successfully, skipping the remainder
of the pattern. However, when it is inside a subpattern that is called
as a subroutine, only that subpattern is ended successfully. Matching
then continues at the outer level. If (*ACCEPT) in triggered in a posi-
tive assertion, the assertion succeeds; in a negative assertion, the
assertion fails.
If (*ACCEPT) is inside capturing parentheses, the data so far is cap-
tured. For example:
A((?:A|B(*ACCEPT)|C)D)
This matches "AB", "AAD", or "ACD"; when it matches "AB", "B" is cap-
tured by the outer parentheses.
(*FAIL) or (*F)
This verb causes a matching failure, forcing backtracking to occur. It
is equivalent to (?!) but easier to read. The Perl documentation notes
that it is probably useful only when combined with (?{}) or (??{}).
Those are, of course, Perl features that are not present in PCRE. The
nearest equivalent is the callout feature, as for example in this pat-
tern:
a+(?C)(*FAIL)
A match with the string "aaaa" always fails, but the callout is taken
before each backtrack happens (in this example, 10 times).
Recording which path was taken
There is one verb whose main purpose is to track how a match was
arrived at, though it also has a secondary use in conjunction with
advancing the match starting point (see (*SKIP) below).
(*MARK:NAME) or (*:NAME)
A name is always required with this verb. There may be as many
instances of (*MARK) as you like in a pattern, and their names do not
have to be unique.
When a match succeeds, the name of the last-encountered (*MARK:NAME),
(*PRUNE:NAME), or (*THEN:NAME) on the matching path is passed back to
the caller as described in the section entitled "Extra data for
pcre_exec()" in the pcreapi documentation. Here is an example of
pcretest output, where the /K modifier requests the retrieval and out-
putting of (*MARK) data:
re> /X(*MARK:A)Y|X(*MARK:B)Z/K
data> XY
0: XY
MK: A
XZ
0: XZ
MK: B
The (*MARK) name is tagged with "MK:" in this output, and in this exam-
ple it indicates which of the two alternatives matched. This is a more
efficient way of obtaining this information than putting each alterna-
tive in its own capturing parentheses.
If a verb with a name is encountered in a positive assertion that is
true, the name is recorded and passed back if it is the last-encoun-
tered. This does not happen for negative assertions or failing positive
assertions.
After a partial match or a failed match, the last encountered name in
the entire match process is returned. For example:
re> /X(*MARK:A)Y|X(*MARK:B)Z/K
data> XP
No match, mark = B
Note that in this unanchored example the mark is retained from the
match attempt that started at the letter "X" in the subject. Subsequent
match attempts starting at "P" and then with an empty string do not get
as far as the (*MARK) item, but nevertheless do not reset it.
If you are interested in (*MARK) values after failed matches, you
should probably set the PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE option (see above) to
ensure that the match is always attempted.
Verbs that act after backtracking
The following verbs do nothing when they are encountered. Matching con-
tinues with what follows, but if there is no subsequent match, causing
a backtrack to the verb, a failure is forced. That is, backtracking
cannot pass to the left of the verb. However, when one of these verbs
appears inside an atomic group or an assertion that is true, its effect
is confined to that group, because once the group has been matched,
there is never any backtracking into it. In this situation, backtrack-
ing can "jump back" to the left of the entire atomic group or asser-
tion. (Remember also, as stated above, that this localization also
applies in subroutine calls.)
These verbs differ in exactly what kind of failure occurs when back-
tracking reaches them. The behaviour described below is what happens
when the verb is not in a subroutine or an assertion. Subsequent sec-
tions cover these special cases.
(*COMMIT)
This verb, which may not be followed by a name, causes the whole match
to fail outright if there is a later matching failure that causes back-
tracking to reach it. Even if the pattern is unanchored, no further
attempts to find a match by advancing the starting point take place. If
(*COMMIT) is the only backtracking verb that is encountered, once it
has been passed pcre_exec() is committed to finding a match at the cur-
rent starting point, or not at all. For example:
a+(*COMMIT)b
This matches "xxaab" but not "aacaab". It can be thought of as a kind
of dynamic anchor, or "I've started, so I must finish." The name of the
most recently passed (*MARK) in the path is passed back when (*COMMIT)
forces a match failure.
If there is more than one backtracking verb in a pattern, a different
one that follows (*COMMIT) may be triggered first, so merely passing
(*COMMIT) during a match does not always guarantee that a match must be
at this starting point.
Note that (*COMMIT) at the start of a pattern is not the same as an
anchor, unless PCRE's start-of-match optimizations are turned off, as
shown in this output from pcretest:
re> /(*COMMIT)abc/
data> xyzabc
0: abc
data> xyzabc\Y
No match
For this pattern, PCRE knows that any match must start with "a", so the
optimization skips along the subject to "a" before applying the pattern
to the first set of data. The match attempt then succeeds. In the sec-
ond set of data, the escape sequence \Y is interpreted by the pcretest
program. It causes the PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE option to be set when
pcre_exec() is called. This disables the optimization that skips along
to the first character. The pattern is now applied starting at "x", and
so the (*COMMIT) causes the match to fail without trying any other
starting points.
(*PRUNE) or (*PRUNE:NAME)
This verb causes the match to fail at the current starting position in
the subject if there is a later matching failure that causes backtrack-
ing to reach it. If the pattern is unanchored, the normal "bumpalong"
advance to the next starting character then happens. Backtracking can
occur as usual to the left of (*PRUNE), before it is reached, or when
matching to the right of (*PRUNE), but if there is no match to the
right, backtracking cannot cross (*PRUNE). In simple cases, the use of
(*PRUNE) is just an alternative to an atomic group or possessive quan-
tifier, but there are some uses of (*PRUNE) that cannot be expressed in
any other way. In an anchored pattern (*PRUNE) has the same effect as
(*COMMIT).
The behaviour of (*PRUNE:NAME) is the not the same as
(*MARK:NAME)(*PRUNE). It is like (*MARK:NAME) in that the name is
remembered for passing back to the caller. However, (*SKIP:NAME)
searches only for names set with (*MARK).
(*SKIP)
This verb, when given without a name, is like (*PRUNE), except that if
the pattern is unanchored, the "bumpalong" advance is not to the next
character, but to the position in the subject where (*SKIP) was encoun-
tered. (*SKIP) signifies that whatever text was matched leading up to
it cannot be part of a successful match. Consider:
a+(*SKIP)b
If the subject is "aaaac...", after the first match attempt fails
(starting at the first character in the string), the starting point
skips on to start the next attempt at "c". Note that a possessive quan-
tifer does not have the same effect as this example; although it would
suppress backtracking during the first match attempt, the second
attempt would start at the second character instead of skipping on to
"c".
(*SKIP:NAME)
When (*SKIP) has an associated name, its behaviour is modified. When it
is triggered, the previous path through the pattern is searched for the
most recent (*MARK) that has the same name. If one is found, the
"bumpalong" advance is to the subject position that corresponds to that
(*MARK) instead of to where (*SKIP) was encountered. If no (*MARK) with
a matching name is found, the (*SKIP) is ignored.
Note that (*SKIP:NAME) searches only for names set by (*MARK:NAME). It
ignores names that are set by (*PRUNE:NAME) or (*THEN:NAME).
(*THEN) or (*THEN:NAME)
This verb causes a skip to the next innermost alternative when back-
tracking reaches it. That is, it cancels any further backtracking
within the current alternative. Its name comes from the observation
that it can be used for a pattern-based if-then-else block:
( COND1 (*THEN) FOO | COND2 (*THEN) BAR | COND3 (*THEN) BAZ ) ...
If the COND1 pattern matches, FOO is tried (and possibly further items
after the end of the group if FOO succeeds); on failure, the matcher
skips to the second alternative and tries COND2, without backtracking
into COND1. If that succeeds and BAR fails, COND3 is tried. If subse-
quently BAZ fails, there are no more alternatives, so there is a back-
track to whatever came before the entire group. If (*THEN) is not
inside an alternation, it acts like (*PRUNE).
The behaviour of (*THEN:NAME) is the not the same as
(*MARK:NAME)(*THEN). It is like (*MARK:NAME) in that the name is
remembered for passing back to the caller. However, (*SKIP:NAME)
searches only for names set with (*MARK).
A subpattern that does not contain a | character is just a part of the
enclosing alternative; it is not a nested alternation with only one
alternative. The effect of (*THEN) extends beyond such a subpattern to
the enclosing alternative. Consider this pattern, where A, B, etc. are
complex pattern fragments that do not contain any | characters at this
level:
A (B(*THEN)C) | D
If A and B are matched, but there is a failure in C, matching does not
backtrack into A; instead it moves to the next alternative, that is, D.
However, if the subpattern containing (*THEN) is given an alternative,
it behaves differently:
A (B(*THEN)C | (*FAIL)) | D
The effect of (*THEN) is now confined to the inner subpattern. After a
failure in C, matching moves to (*FAIL), which causes the whole subpat-
tern to fail because there are no more alternatives to try. In this
case, matching does now backtrack into A.
Note that a conditional subpattern is not considered as having two
alternatives, because only one is ever used. In other words, the |
character in a conditional subpattern has a different meaning. Ignoring
white space, consider:
^.*? (?(?=a) a | b(*THEN)c )
If the subject is "ba", this pattern does not match. Because .*? is
ungreedy, it initially matches zero characters. The condition (?=a)
then fails, the character "b" is matched, but "c" is not. At this
point, matching does not backtrack to .*? as might perhaps be expected
from the presence of the | character. The conditional subpattern is
part of the single alternative that comprises the whole pattern, and so
the match fails. (If there was a backtrack into .*?, allowing it to
match "b", the match would succeed.)
The verbs just described provide four different "strengths" of control
when subsequent matching fails. (*THEN) is the weakest, carrying on the
match at the next alternative. (*PRUNE) comes next, failing the match
at the current starting position, but allowing an advance to the next
character (for an unanchored pattern). (*SKIP) is similar, except that
the advance may be more than one character. (*COMMIT) is the strongest,
causing the entire match to fail.
More than one backtracking verb
If more than one backtracking verb is present in a pattern, the one
that is backtracked onto first acts. For example, consider this pat-
tern, where A, B, etc. are complex pattern fragments:
(A(*COMMIT)B(*THEN)C|ABD)
If A matches but B fails, the backtrack to (*COMMIT) causes the entire
match to fail. However, if A and B match, but C fails, the backtrack to
(*THEN) causes the next alternative (ABD) to be tried. This behaviour
is consistent, but is not always the same as Perl's. It means that if
two or more backtracking verbs appear in succession, all the the last
of them has no effect. Consider this example:
...(*COMMIT)(*PRUNE)...
If there is a matching failure to the right, backtracking onto (*PRUNE)
causes it to be triggered, and its action is taken. There can never be
a backtrack onto (*COMMIT).
Backtracking verbs in repeated groups
PCRE differs from Perl in its handling of backtracking verbs in
repeated groups. For example, consider:
/(a(*COMMIT)b)+ac/
If the subject is "abac", Perl matches, but PCRE fails because the
(*COMMIT) in the second repeat of the group acts.
Backtracking verbs in assertions
(*FAIL) in an assertion has its normal effect: it forces an immediate
backtrack.
(*ACCEPT) in a positive assertion causes the assertion to succeed with-
out any further processing. In a negative assertion, (*ACCEPT) causes
the assertion to fail without any further processing.
The other backtracking verbs are not treated specially if they appear
in a positive assertion. In particular, (*THEN) skips to the next
alternative in the innermost enclosing group that has alternations,
whether or not this is within the assertion.
Negative assertions are, however, different, in order to ensure that
changing a positive assertion into a negative assertion changes its
result. Backtracking into (*COMMIT), (*SKIP), or (*PRUNE) causes a neg-
ative assertion to be true, without considering any further alternative
branches in the assertion. Backtracking into (*THEN) causes it to skip
to the next enclosing alternative within the assertion (the normal be-
haviour), but if the assertion does not have such an alternative,
(*THEN) behaves like (*PRUNE).
Backtracking verbs in subroutines
These behaviours occur whether or not the subpattern is called recur-
sively. Perl's treatment of subroutines is different in some cases.
(*FAIL) in a subpattern called as a subroutine has its normal effect:
it forces an immediate backtrack.
(*ACCEPT) in a subpattern called as a subroutine causes the subroutine
match to succeed without any further processing. Matching then contin-
ues after the subroutine call.
(*COMMIT), (*SKIP), and (*PRUNE) in a subpattern called as a subroutine
cause the subroutine match to fail.
(*THEN) skips to the next alternative in the innermost enclosing group
within the subpattern that has alternatives. If there is no such group
within the subpattern, (*THEN) causes the subroutine match to fail.
SEE ALSO
pcreapi(3), pcrecallout(3), pcrematching(3), pcresyntax(3), pcre(3),
pcre16(3), pcre32(3).
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 23 October 2016
Copyright (c) 1997-2016 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCRESYNTAX(3) Library Functions Manual PCRESYNTAX(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
PCRE REGULAR EXPRESSION SYNTAX SUMMARY
The full syntax and semantics of the regular expressions that are sup-
ported by PCRE are described in the pcrepattern documentation. This
document contains a quick-reference summary of the syntax.
QUOTING
\x where x is non-alphanumeric is a literal x
\Q...\E treat enclosed characters as literal
CHARACTERS
\a alarm, that is, the BEL character (hex 07)
\cx "control-x", where x is any ASCII character
\e escape (hex 1B)
\f form feed (hex 0C)
\n newline (hex 0A)
\r carriage return (hex 0D)
\t tab (hex 09)
\0dd character with octal code 0dd
\ddd character with octal code ddd, or backreference
\o{ddd..} character with octal code ddd..
\xhh character with hex code hh
\x{hhh..} character with hex code hhh..
Note that \0dd is always an octal code, and that \8 and \9 are the lit-
eral characters "8" and "9".
CHARACTER TYPES
. any character except newline;
in dotall mode, any character whatsoever
\C one data unit, even in UTF mode (best avoided)
\d a decimal digit
\D a character that is not a decimal digit
\h a horizontal white space character
\H a character that is not a horizontal white space character
\N a character that is not a newline
\p{xx} a character with the xx property
\P{xx} a character without the xx property
\R a newline sequence
\s a white space character
\S a character that is not a white space character
\v a vertical white space character
\V a character that is not a vertical white space character
\w a "word" character
\W a "non-word" character
\X a Unicode extended grapheme cluster
By default, \d, \s, and \w match only ASCII characters, even in UTF-8
mode or in the 16- bit and 32-bit libraries. However, if locale-spe-
cific matching is happening, \s and \w may also match characters with
code points in the range 128-255. If the PCRE_UCP option is set, the
behaviour of these escape sequences is changed to use Unicode proper-
ties and they match many more characters.
GENERAL CATEGORY PROPERTIES FOR \p and \P
C Other
Cc Control
Cf Format
Cn Unassigned
Co Private use
Cs Surrogate
L Letter
Ll Lower case letter
Lm Modifier letter
Lo Other letter
Lt Title case letter
Lu Upper case letter
L& Ll, Lu, or Lt
M Mark
Mc Spacing mark
Me Enclosing mark
Mn Non-spacing mark
N Number
Nd Decimal number
Nl Letter number
No Other number
P Punctuation
Pc Connector punctuation
Pd Dash punctuation
Pe Close punctuation
Pf Final punctuation
Pi Initial punctuation
Po Other punctuation
Ps Open punctuation
S Symbol
Sc Currency symbol
Sk Modifier symbol
Sm Mathematical symbol
So Other symbol
Z Separator
Zl Line separator
Zp Paragraph separator
Zs Space separator
PCRE SPECIAL CATEGORY PROPERTIES FOR \p and \P
Xan Alphanumeric: union of properties L and N
Xps POSIX space: property Z or tab, NL, VT, FF, CR
Xsp Perl space: property Z or tab, NL, VT, FF, CR
Xuc Univerally-named character: one that can be
represented by a Universal Character Name
Xwd Perl word: property Xan or underscore
Perl and POSIX space are now the same. Perl added VT to its space char-
acter set at release 5.18 and PCRE changed at release 8.34.
SCRIPT NAMES FOR \p AND \P
Arabic, Armenian, Avestan, Balinese, Bamum, Bassa_Vah, Batak, Bengali,
Bopomofo, Brahmi, Braille, Buginese, Buhid, Canadian_Aboriginal, Car-
ian, Caucasian_Albanian, Chakma, Cham, Cherokee, Common, Coptic, Cunei-
form, Cypriot, Cyrillic, Deseret, Devanagari, Duployan, Egyptian_Hiero-
glyphs, Elbasan, Ethiopic, Georgian, Glagolitic, Gothic, Grantha,
Greek, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Han, Hangul, Hanunoo, Hebrew, Hiragana,
Imperial_Aramaic, Inherited, Inscriptional_Pahlavi, Inscrip-
tional_Parthian, Javanese, Kaithi, Kannada, Katakana, Kayah_Li,
Kharoshthi, Khmer, Khojki, Khudawadi, Lao, Latin, Lepcha, Limbu, Lin-
ear_A, Linear_B, Lisu, Lycian, Lydian, Mahajani, Malayalam, Mandaic,
Manichaean, Meetei_Mayek, Mende_Kikakui, Meroitic_Cursive,
Meroitic_Hieroglyphs, Miao, Modi, Mongolian, Mro, Myanmar, Nabataean,
New_Tai_Lue, Nko, Ogham, Ol_Chiki, Old_Italic, Old_North_Arabian,
Old_Permic, Old_Persian, Old_South_Arabian, Old_Turkic, Oriya, Osmanya,
Pahawh_Hmong, Palmyrene, Pau_Cin_Hau, Phags_Pa, Phoenician,
Psalter_Pahlavi, Rejang, Runic, Samaritan, Saurashtra, Sharada, Sha-
vian, Siddham, Sinhala, Sora_Sompeng, Sundanese, Syloti_Nagri, Syriac,
Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Tai_Le, Tai_Tham, Tai_Viet, Takri, Tamil, Telugu,
Thaana, Thai, Tibetan, Tifinagh, Tirhuta, Ugaritic, Vai, Warang_Citi,
Yi.
CHARACTER CLASSES
[...] positive character class
[^...] negative character class
[x-y] range (can be used for hex characters)
[[:xxx:]] positive POSIX named set
[[:^xxx:]] negative POSIX named set
alnum alphanumeric
alpha alphabetic
ascii 0-127
blank space or tab
cntrl control character
digit decimal digit
graph printing, excluding space
lower lower case letter
print printing, including space
punct printing, excluding alphanumeric
space white space
upper upper case letter
word same as \w
xdigit hexadecimal digit
In PCRE, POSIX character set names recognize only ASCII characters by
default, but some of them use Unicode properties if PCRE_UCP is set.
You can use \Q...\E inside a character class.
QUANTIFIERS
? 0 or 1, greedy
?+ 0 or 1, possessive
?? 0 or 1, lazy
* 0 or more, greedy
*+ 0 or more, possessive
*? 0 or more, lazy
+ 1 or more, greedy
++ 1 or more, possessive
+? 1 or more, lazy
{n} exactly n
{n,m} at least n, no more than m, greedy
{n,m}+ at least n, no more than m, possessive
{n,m}? at least n, no more than m, lazy
{n,} n or more, greedy
{n,}+ n or more, possessive
{n,}? n or more, lazy
ANCHORS AND SIMPLE ASSERTIONS
\b word boundary
\B not a word boundary
^ start of subject
also after internal newline in multiline mode
\A start of subject
$ end of subject
also before newline at end of subject
also before internal newline in multiline mode
\Z end of subject
also before newline at end of subject
\z end of subject
\G first matching position in subject
MATCH POINT RESET
\K reset start of match
\K is honoured in positive assertions, but ignored in negative ones.
ALTERNATION
expr|expr|expr...
CAPTURING
(...) capturing group
(?<name>...) named capturing group (Perl)
(?'name'...) named capturing group (Perl)
(?P<name>...) named capturing group (Python)
(?:...) non-capturing group
(?|...) non-capturing group; reset group numbers for
capturing groups in each alternative
ATOMIC GROUPS
(?>...) atomic, non-capturing group
COMMENT
(?#....) comment (not nestable)
OPTION SETTING
(?i) caseless
(?J) allow duplicate names
(?m) multiline
(?s) single line (dotall)
(?U) default ungreedy (lazy)
(?x) extended (ignore white space)
(?-...) unset option(s)
The following are recognized only at the very start of a pattern or
after one of the newline or \R options with similar syntax. More than
one of them may appear.
(*LIMIT_MATCH=d) set the match limit to d (decimal number)
(*LIMIT_RECURSION=d) set the recursion limit to d (decimal number)
(*NO_AUTO_POSSESS) no auto-possessification (PCRE_NO_AUTO_POSSESS)
(*NO_START_OPT) no start-match optimization (PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE)
(*UTF8) set UTF-8 mode: 8-bit library (PCRE_UTF8)
(*UTF16) set UTF-16 mode: 16-bit library (PCRE_UTF16)
(*UTF32) set UTF-32 mode: 32-bit library (PCRE_UTF32)
(*UTF) set appropriate UTF mode for the library in use
(*UCP) set PCRE_UCP (use Unicode properties for \d etc)
Note that LIMIT_MATCH and LIMIT_RECURSION can only reduce the value of
the limits set by the caller of pcre_exec(), not increase them.
NEWLINE CONVENTION
These are recognized only at the very start of the pattern or after
option settings with a similar syntax.
(*CR) carriage return only
(*LF) linefeed only
(*CRLF) carriage return followed by linefeed
(*ANYCRLF) all three of the above
(*ANY) any Unicode newline sequence
WHAT \R MATCHES
These are recognized only at the very start of the pattern or after
option setting with a similar syntax.
(*BSR_ANYCRLF) CR, LF, or CRLF
(*BSR_UNICODE) any Unicode newline sequence
LOOKAHEAD AND LOOKBEHIND ASSERTIONS
(?=...) positive look ahead
(?!...) negative look ahead
(?<=...) positive look behind
(?<!...) negative look behind
Each top-level branch of a look behind must be of a fixed length.
BACKREFERENCES
\n reference by number (can be ambiguous)
\gn reference by number
\g{n} reference by number
\g{-n} relative reference by number
\k<name> reference by name (Perl)
\k'name' reference by name (Perl)
\g{name} reference by name (Perl)
\k{name} reference by name (.NET)
(?P=name) reference by name (Python)
SUBROUTINE REFERENCES (POSSIBLY RECURSIVE)
(?R) recurse whole pattern
(?n) call subpattern by absolute number
(?+n) call subpattern by relative number
(?-n) call subpattern by relative number
(?&name) call subpattern by name (Perl)
(?P>name) call subpattern by name (Python)
\g<name> call subpattern by name (Oniguruma)
\g'name' call subpattern by name (Oniguruma)
\g<n> call subpattern by absolute number (Oniguruma)
\g'n' call subpattern by absolute number (Oniguruma)
\g<+n> call subpattern by relative number (PCRE extension)
\g'+n' call subpattern by relative number (PCRE extension)
\g<-n> call subpattern by relative number (PCRE extension)
\g'-n' call subpattern by relative number (PCRE extension)
CONDITIONAL PATTERNS
(?(condition)yes-pattern)
(?(condition)yes-pattern|no-pattern)
(?(n)... absolute reference condition
(?(+n)... relative reference condition
(?(-n)... relative reference condition
(?(<name>)... named reference condition (Perl)
(?('name')... named reference condition (Perl)
(?(name)... named reference condition (PCRE)
(?(R)... overall recursion condition
(?(Rn)... specific group recursion condition
(?(R&name)... specific recursion condition
(?(DEFINE)... define subpattern for reference
(?(assert)... assertion condition
BACKTRACKING CONTROL
The following act immediately they are reached:
(*ACCEPT) force successful match
(*FAIL) force backtrack; synonym (*F)
(*MARK:NAME) set name to be passed back; synonym (*:NAME)
The following act only when a subsequent match failure causes a back-
track to reach them. They all force a match failure, but they differ in
what happens afterwards. Those that advance the start-of-match point do
so only if the pattern is not anchored.
(*COMMIT) overall failure, no advance of starting point
(*PRUNE) advance to next starting character
(*PRUNE:NAME) equivalent to (*MARK:NAME)(*PRUNE)
(*SKIP) advance to current matching position
(*SKIP:NAME) advance to position corresponding to an earlier
(*MARK:NAME); if not found, the (*SKIP) is ignored
(*THEN) local failure, backtrack to next alternation
(*THEN:NAME) equivalent to (*MARK:NAME)(*THEN)
CALLOUTS
(?C) callout
(?Cn) callout with data n
SEE ALSO
pcrepattern(3), pcreapi(3), pcrecallout(3), pcrematching(3), pcre(3).
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 08 January 2014
Copyright (c) 1997-2014 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCREUNICODE(3) Library Functions Manual PCREUNICODE(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32, AND UNICODE PROPERTY SUPPORT
As well as UTF-8 support, PCRE also supports UTF-16 (from release 8.30)
and UTF-32 (from release 8.32), by means of two additional libraries.
They can be built as well as, or instead of, the 8-bit library.
UTF-8 SUPPORT
In order process UTF-8 strings, you must build PCRE's 8-bit library
with UTF support, and, in addition, you must call pcre_compile() with
the PCRE_UTF8 option flag, or the pattern must start with the sequence
(*UTF8) or (*UTF). When either of these is the case, both the pattern
and any subject strings that are matched against it are treated as
UTF-8 strings instead of strings of individual 1-byte characters.
UTF-16 AND UTF-32 SUPPORT
In order process UTF-16 or UTF-32 strings, you must build PCRE's 16-bit
or 32-bit library with UTF support, and, in addition, you must call
pcre16_compile() or pcre32_compile() with the PCRE_UTF16 or PCRE_UTF32
option flag, as appropriate. Alternatively, the pattern must start with
the sequence (*UTF16), (*UTF32), as appropriate, or (*UTF), which can
be used with either library. When UTF mode is set, both the pattern and
any subject strings that are matched against it are treated as UTF-16
or UTF-32 strings instead of strings of individual 16-bit or 32-bit
characters.
UTF SUPPORT OVERHEAD
If you compile PCRE with UTF support, but do not use it at run time,
the library will be a bit bigger, but the additional run time overhead
is limited to testing the PCRE_UTF[8|16|32] flag occasionally, so
should not be very big.
UNICODE PROPERTY SUPPORT
If PCRE is built with Unicode character property support (which implies
UTF support), the escape sequences \p{..}, \P{..}, and \X can be used.
The available properties that can be tested are limited to the general
category properties such as Lu for an upper case letter or Nd for a
decimal number, the Unicode script names such as Arabic or Han, and the
derived properties Any and L&. Full lists is given in the pcrepattern
and pcresyntax documentation. Only the short names for properties are
supported. For example, \p{L} matches a letter. Its Perl synonym,
\p{Letter}, is not supported. Furthermore, in Perl, many properties
may optionally be prefixed by "Is", for compatibility with Perl 5.6.
PCRE does not support this.
Validity of UTF-8 strings
When you set the PCRE_UTF8 flag, the byte strings passed as patterns
and subjects are (by default) checked for validity on entry to the rel-
evant functions. The entire string is checked before any other process-
ing takes place. From release 7.3 of PCRE, the check is according the
rules of RFC 3629, which are themselves derived from the Unicode speci-
fication. Earlier releases of PCRE followed the rules of RFC 2279,
which allows the full range of 31-bit values (0 to 0x7FFFFFFF). The
current check allows only values in the range U+0 to U+10FFFF, exclud-
ing the surrogate area. (From release 8.33 the so-called "non-charac-
ter" code points are no longer excluded because Unicode corrigendum #9
makes it clear that they should not be.)
Characters in the "Surrogate Area" of Unicode are reserved for use by
UTF-16, where they are used in pairs to encode codepoints with values
greater than 0xFFFF. The code points that are encoded by UTF-16 pairs
are available independently in the UTF-8 and UTF-32 encodings. (In
other words, the whole surrogate thing is a fudge for UTF-16 which
unfortunately messes up UTF-8 and UTF-32.)
If an invalid UTF-8 string is passed to PCRE, an error return is given.
At compile time, the only additional information is the offset to the
first byte of the failing character. The run-time functions pcre_exec()
and pcre_dfa_exec() also pass back this information, as well as a more
detailed reason code if the caller has provided memory in which to do
this.
In some situations, you may already know that your strings are valid,
and therefore want to skip these checks in order to improve perfor-
mance, for example in the case of a long subject string that is being
scanned repeatedly. If you set the PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK flag at compile
time or at run time, PCRE assumes that the pattern or subject it is
given (respectively) contains only valid UTF-8 codes. In this case, it
does not diagnose an invalid UTF-8 string.
Note that passing PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK to pcre_compile() just disables
the check for the pattern; it does not also apply to subject strings.
If you want to disable the check for a subject string you must pass
this option to pcre_exec() or pcre_dfa_exec().
If you pass an invalid UTF-8 string when PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK is set, the
result is undefined and your program may crash.
Validity of UTF-16 strings
When you set the PCRE_UTF16 flag, the strings of 16-bit data units that
are passed as patterns and subjects are (by default) checked for valid-
ity on entry to the relevant functions. Values other than those in the
surrogate range U+D800 to U+DFFF are independent code points. Values in
the surrogate range must be used in pairs in the correct manner.
If an invalid UTF-16 string is passed to PCRE, an error return is
given. At compile time, the only additional information is the offset
to the first data unit of the failing character. The run-time functions
pcre16_exec() and pcre16_dfa_exec() also pass back this information, as
well as a more detailed reason code if the caller has provided memory
in which to do this.
In some situations, you may already know that your strings are valid,
and therefore want to skip these checks in order to improve perfor-
mance. If you set the PCRE_NO_UTF16_CHECK flag at compile time or at
run time, PCRE assumes that the pattern or subject it is given (respec-
tively) contains only valid UTF-16 sequences. In this case, it does not
diagnose an invalid UTF-16 string. However, if an invalid string is
passed, the result is undefined.
Validity of UTF-32 strings
When you set the PCRE_UTF32 flag, the strings of 32-bit data units that
are passed as patterns and subjects are (by default) checked for valid-
ity on entry to the relevant functions. This check allows only values
in the range U+0 to U+10FFFF, excluding the surrogate area U+D800 to
U+DFFF.
If an invalid UTF-32 string is passed to PCRE, an error return is
given. At compile time, the only additional information is the offset
to the first data unit of the failing character. The run-time functions
pcre32_exec() and pcre32_dfa_exec() also pass back this information, as
well as a more detailed reason code if the caller has provided memory
in which to do this.
In some situations, you may already know that your strings are valid,
and therefore want to skip these checks in order to improve perfor-
mance. If you set the PCRE_NO_UTF32_CHECK flag at compile time or at
run time, PCRE assumes that the pattern or subject it is given (respec-
tively) contains only valid UTF-32 sequences. In this case, it does not
diagnose an invalid UTF-32 string. However, if an invalid string is
passed, the result is undefined.
General comments about UTF modes
1. Codepoints less than 256 can be specified in patterns by either
braced or unbraced hexadecimal escape sequences (for example, \x{b3} or
\xb3). Larger values have to use braced sequences.
2. Octal numbers up to \777 are recognized, and in UTF-8 mode they
match two-byte characters for values greater than \177.
3. Repeat quantifiers apply to complete UTF characters, not to individ-
ual data units, for example: \x{100}{3}.
4. The dot metacharacter matches one UTF character instead of a single
data unit.
5. The escape sequence \C can be used to match a single byte in UTF-8
mode, or a single 16-bit data unit in UTF-16 mode, or a single 32-bit
data unit in UTF-32 mode, but its use can lead to some strange effects
because it breaks up multi-unit characters (see the description of \C
in the pcrepattern documentation). The use of \C is not supported in
the alternative matching function pcre[16|32]_dfa_exec(), nor is it
supported in UTF mode by the JIT optimization of pcre[16|32]_exec(). If
JIT optimization is requested for a UTF pattern that contains \C, it
will not succeed, and so the matching will be carried out by the normal
interpretive function.
6. The character escapes \b, \B, \d, \D, \s, \S, \w, and \W correctly
test characters of any code value, but, by default, the characters that
PCRE recognizes as digits, spaces, or word characters remain the same
set as in non-UTF mode, all with values less than 256. This remains
true even when PCRE is built to include Unicode property support,
because to do otherwise would slow down PCRE in many common cases. Note
in particular that this applies to \b and \B, because they are defined
in terms of \w and \W. If you really want to test for a wider sense of,
say, "digit", you can use explicit Unicode property tests such as
\p{Nd}. Alternatively, if you set the PCRE_UCP option, the way that the
character escapes work is changed so that Unicode properties are used
to determine which characters match. There are more details in the sec-
tion on generic character types in the pcrepattern documentation.
7. Similarly, characters that match the POSIX named character classes
are all low-valued characters, unless the PCRE_UCP option is set.
8. However, the horizontal and vertical white space matching escapes
(\h, \H, \v, and \V) do match all the appropriate Unicode characters,
whether or not PCRE_UCP is set.
9. Case-insensitive matching applies only to characters whose values
are less than 128, unless PCRE is built with Unicode property support.
A few Unicode characters such as Greek sigma have more than two code-
points that are case-equivalent. Up to and including PCRE release 8.31,
only one-to-one case mappings were supported, but later releases (with
Unicode property support) do treat as case-equivalent all versions of
characters such as Greek sigma.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 27 February 2013
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCREJIT(3) Library Functions Manual PCREJIT(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
PCRE JUST-IN-TIME COMPILER SUPPORT
Just-in-time compiling is a heavyweight optimization that can greatly
speed up pattern matching. However, it comes at the cost of extra pro-
cessing before the match is performed. Therefore, it is of most benefit
when the same pattern is going to be matched many times. This does not
necessarily mean many calls of a matching function; if the pattern is
not anchored, matching attempts may take place many times at various
positions in the subject, even for a single call. Therefore, if the
subject string is very long, it may still pay to use JIT for one-off
matches.
JIT support applies only to the traditional Perl-compatible matching
function. It does not apply when the DFA matching function is being
used. The code for this support was written by Zoltan Herczeg.
8-BIT, 16-BIT AND 32-BIT SUPPORT
JIT support is available for all of the 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit PCRE
libraries. To keep this documentation simple, only the 8-bit interface
is described in what follows. If you are using the 16-bit library, sub-
stitute the 16-bit functions and 16-bit structures (for example,
pcre16_jit_stack instead of pcre_jit_stack). If you are using the
32-bit library, substitute the 32-bit functions and 32-bit structures
(for example, pcre32_jit_stack instead of pcre_jit_stack).
AVAILABILITY OF JIT SUPPORT
JIT support is an optional feature of PCRE. The "configure" option
--enable-jit (or equivalent CMake option) must be set when PCRE is
built if you want to use JIT. The support is limited to the following
hardware platforms:
ARM v5, v7, and Thumb2
Intel x86 32-bit and 64-bit
MIPS 32-bit
Power PC 32-bit and 64-bit
SPARC 32-bit (experimental)
If --enable-jit is set on an unsupported platform, compilation fails.
A program that is linked with PCRE 8.20 or later can tell if JIT sup-
port is available by calling pcre_config() with the PCRE_CONFIG_JIT
option. The result is 1 when JIT is available, and 0 otherwise. How-
ever, a simple program does not need to check this in order to use JIT.
The normal API is implemented in a way that falls back to the interpre-
tive code if JIT is not available. For programs that need the best pos-
sible performance, there is also a "fast path" API that is JIT-spe-
cific.
If your program may sometimes be linked with versions of PCRE that are
older than 8.20, but you want to use JIT when it is available, you can
test the values of PCRE_MAJOR and PCRE_MINOR, or the existence of a JIT
macro such as PCRE_CONFIG_JIT, for compile-time control of your code.
Also beware that the pcre_jit_exec() function was not available at all
before 8.32, and may not be available at all if PCRE isn't compiled
with --enable-jit. See the "JIT FAST PATH API" section below for
details.
SIMPLE USE OF JIT
You have to do two things to make use of the JIT support in the sim-
plest way:
(1) Call pcre_study() with the PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE option for
each compiled pattern, and pass the resulting pcre_extra block to
pcre_exec().
(2) Use pcre_free_study() to free the pcre_extra block when it is
no longer needed, instead of just freeing it yourself. This
ensures that
any JIT data is also freed.
For a program that may be linked with pre-8.20 versions of PCRE, you
can insert
#ifndef PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE
#define PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE 0
#endif
so that no option is passed to pcre_study(), and then use something
like this to free the study data:
#ifdef PCRE_CONFIG_JIT
pcre_free_study(study_ptr);
#else
pcre_free(study_ptr);
#endif
PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE requests the JIT compiler to generate code for
complete matches. If you want to run partial matches using the
PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD or PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT options of pcre_exec(), you
should set one or both of the following options in addition to, or
instead of, PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE when you call pcre_study():
PCRE_STUDY_JIT_PARTIAL_HARD_COMPILE
PCRE_STUDY_JIT_PARTIAL_SOFT_COMPILE
If using pcre_jit_exec() and supporting a pre-8.32 version of PCRE, you
can insert:
#if PCRE_MAJOR >= 8 && PCRE_MINOR >= 32
pcre_jit_exec(...);
#else
pcre_exec(...)
#endif
but as described in the "JIT FAST PATH API" section below this assumes
version 8.32 and later are compiled with --enable-jit, which may break.
The JIT compiler generates different optimized code for each of the
three modes (normal, soft partial, hard partial). When pcre_exec() is
called, the appropriate code is run if it is available. Otherwise, the
pattern is matched using interpretive code.
In some circumstances you may need to call additional functions. These
are described in the section entitled "Controlling the JIT stack"
below.
If JIT support is not available, PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE etc. are
ignored, and no JIT data is created. Otherwise, the compiled pattern is
passed to the JIT compiler, which turns it into machine code that exe-
cutes much faster than the normal interpretive code. When pcre_exec()
is passed a pcre_extra block containing a pointer to JIT code of the
appropriate mode (normal or hard/soft partial), it obeys that code
instead of running the interpreter. The result is identical, but the
compiled JIT code runs much faster.
There are some pcre_exec() options that are not supported for JIT exe-
cution. There are also some pattern items that JIT cannot handle.
Details are given below. In both cases, execution automatically falls
back to the interpretive code. If you want to know whether JIT was
actually used for a particular match, you should arrange for a JIT
callback function to be set up as described in the section entitled
"Controlling the JIT stack" below, even if you do not need to supply a
non-default JIT stack. Such a callback function is called whenever JIT
code is about to be obeyed. If the execution options are not right for
JIT execution, the callback function is not obeyed.
If the JIT compiler finds an unsupported item, no JIT data is gener-
ated. You can find out if JIT execution is available after studying a
pattern by calling pcre_fullinfo() with the PCRE_INFO_JIT option. A
result of 1 means that JIT compilation was successful. A result of 0
means that JIT support is not available, or the pattern was not studied
with PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE etc., or the JIT compiler was not able to
handle the pattern.
Once a pattern has been studied, with or without JIT, it can be used as
many times as you like for matching different subject strings.
UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS AND PATTERN ITEMS
The only pcre_exec() options that are supported for JIT execution are
PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK, PCRE_NO_UTF16_CHECK, PCRE_NO_UTF32_CHECK, PCRE_NOT-
BOL, PCRE_NOTEOL, PCRE_NOTEMPTY, PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART, PCRE_PAR-
TIAL_HARD, and PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT.
The only unsupported pattern items are \C (match a single data unit)
when running in a UTF mode, and a callout immediately before an asser-
tion condition in a conditional group.
RETURN VALUES FROM JIT EXECUTION
When a pattern is matched using JIT execution, the return values are
the same as those given by the interpretive pcre_exec() code, with the
addition of one new error code: PCRE_ERROR_JIT_STACKLIMIT. This means
that the memory used for the JIT stack was insufficient. See "Control-
ling the JIT stack" below for a discussion of JIT stack usage. For com-
patibility with the interpretive pcre_exec() code, no more than two-
thirds of the ovector argument is used for passing back captured sub-
strings.
The error code PCRE_ERROR_MATCHLIMIT is returned by the JIT code if
searching a very large pattern tree goes on for too long, as it is in
the same circumstance when JIT is not used, but the details of exactly
what is counted are not the same. The PCRE_ERROR_RECURSIONLIMIT error
code is never returned by JIT execution.
SAVING AND RESTORING COMPILED PATTERNS
The code that is generated by the JIT compiler is architecture-spe-
cific, and is also position dependent. For those reasons it cannot be
saved (in a file or database) and restored later like the bytecode and
other data of a compiled pattern. Saving and restoring compiled pat-
terns is not something many people do. More detail about this facility
is given in the pcreprecompile documentation. It should be possible to
run pcre_study() on a saved and restored pattern, and thereby recreate
the JIT data, but because JIT compilation uses significant resources,
it is probably not worth doing this; you might as well recompile the
original pattern.
CONTROLLING THE JIT STACK
When the compiled JIT code runs, it needs a block of memory to use as a
stack. By default, it uses 32K on the machine stack. However, some
large or complicated patterns need more than this. The error
PCRE_ERROR_JIT_STACKLIMIT is given when there is not enough stack.
Three functions are provided for managing blocks of memory for use as
JIT stacks. There is further discussion about the use of JIT stacks in
the section entitled "JIT stack FAQ" below.
The pcre_jit_stack_alloc() function creates a JIT stack. Its arguments
are a starting size and a maximum size, and it returns a pointer to an
opaque structure of type pcre_jit_stack, or NULL if there is an error.
The pcre_jit_stack_free() function can be used to free a stack that is
no longer needed. (For the technically minded: the address space is
allocated by mmap or VirtualAlloc.)
JIT uses far less memory for recursion than the interpretive code, and
a maximum stack size of 512K to 1M should be more than enough for any
pattern.
The pcre_assign_jit_stack() function specifies which stack JIT code
should use. Its arguments are as follows:
pcre_extra *extra
pcre_jit_callback callback
void *data
The extra argument must be the result of studying a pattern with
PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE etc. There are three cases for the values of the
other two options:
(1) If callback is NULL and data is NULL, an internal 32K block
on the machine stack is used.
(2) If callback is NULL and data is not NULL, data must be
a valid JIT stack, the result of calling pcre_jit_stack_alloc().
(3) If callback is not NULL, it must point to a function that is
called with data as an argument at the start of matching, in
order to set up a JIT stack. If the return from the callback
function is NULL, the internal 32K stack is used; otherwise the
return value must be a valid JIT stack, the result of calling
pcre_jit_stack_alloc().
A callback function is obeyed whenever JIT code is about to be run; it
is not obeyed when pcre_exec() is called with options that are incom-
patible for JIT execution. A callback function can therefore be used to
determine whether a match operation was executed by JIT or by the
interpreter.
You may safely use the same JIT stack for more than one pattern (either
by assigning directly or by callback), as long as the patterns are all
matched sequentially in the same thread. In a multithread application,
if you do not specify a JIT stack, or if you assign or pass back NULL
from a callback, that is thread-safe, because each thread has its own
machine stack. However, if you assign or pass back a non-NULL JIT
stack, this must be a different stack for each thread so that the
application is thread-safe.
Strictly speaking, even more is allowed. You can assign the same non-
NULL stack to any number of patterns as long as they are not used for
matching by multiple threads at the same time. For example, you can
assign the same stack to all compiled patterns, and use a global mutex
in the callback to wait until the stack is available for use. However,
this is an inefficient solution, and not recommended.
This is a suggestion for how a multithreaded program that needs to set
up non-default JIT stacks might operate:
During thread initalization
thread_local_var = pcre_jit_stack_alloc(...)
During thread exit
pcre_jit_stack_free(thread_local_var)
Use a one-line callback function
return thread_local_var
All the functions described in this section do nothing if JIT is not
available, and pcre_assign_jit_stack() does nothing unless the extra
argument is non-NULL and points to a pcre_extra block that is the
result of a successful study with PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE etc.
JIT STACK FAQ
(1) Why do we need JIT stacks?
PCRE (and JIT) is a recursive, depth-first engine, so it needs a stack
where the local data of the current node is pushed before checking its
child nodes. Allocating real machine stack on some platforms is diffi-
cult. For example, the stack chain needs to be updated every time if we
extend the stack on PowerPC. Although it is possible, its updating
time overhead decreases performance. So we do the recursion in memory.
(2) Why don't we simply allocate blocks of memory with malloc()?
Modern operating systems have a nice feature: they can reserve an
address space instead of allocating memory. We can safely allocate mem-
ory pages inside this address space, so the stack could grow without
moving memory data (this is important because of pointers). Thus we can
allocate 1M address space, and use only a single memory page (usually
4K) if that is enough. However, we can still grow up to 1M anytime if
needed.
(3) Who "owns" a JIT stack?
The owner of the stack is the user program, not the JIT studied pattern
or anything else. The user program must ensure that if a stack is used
by pcre_exec(), (that is, it is assigned to the pattern currently run-
ning), that stack must not be used by any other threads (to avoid over-
writing the same memory area). The best practice for multithreaded pro-
grams is to allocate a stack for each thread, and return this stack
through the JIT callback function.
(4) When should a JIT stack be freed?
You can free a JIT stack at any time, as long as it will not be used by
pcre_exec() again. When you assign the stack to a pattern, only a
pointer is set. There is no reference counting or any other magic. You
can free the patterns and stacks in any order, anytime. Just do not
call pcre_exec() with a pattern pointing to an already freed stack, as
that will cause SEGFAULT. (Also, do not free a stack currently used by
pcre_exec() in another thread). You can also replace the stack for a
pattern at any time. You can even free the previous stack before
assigning a replacement.
(5) Should I allocate/free a stack every time before/after calling
pcre_exec()?
No, because this is too costly in terms of resources. However, you
could implement some clever idea which release the stack if it is not
used in let's say two minutes. The JIT callback can help to achieve
this without keeping a list of the currently JIT studied patterns.
(6) OK, the stack is for long term memory allocation. But what happens
if a pattern causes stack overflow with a stack of 1M? Is that 1M kept
until the stack is freed?
Especially on embedded sytems, it might be a good idea to release mem-
ory sometimes without freeing the stack. There is no API for this at
the moment. Probably a function call which returns with the currently
allocated memory for any stack and another which allows releasing mem-
ory (shrinking the stack) would be a good idea if someone needs this.
(7) This is too much of a headache. Isn't there any better solution for
JIT stack handling?
No, thanks to Windows. If POSIX threads were used everywhere, we could
throw out this complicated API.
EXAMPLE CODE
This is a single-threaded example that specifies a JIT stack without
using a callback.
int rc;
int ovector[30];
pcre *re;
pcre_extra *extra;
pcre_jit_stack *jit_stack;
re = pcre_compile(pattern, 0, &error, &erroffset, NULL);
/* Check for errors */
extra = pcre_study(re, PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE, &error);
jit_stack = pcre_jit_stack_alloc(32*1024, 512*1024);
/* Check for error (NULL) */
pcre_assign_jit_stack(extra, NULL, jit_stack);
rc = pcre_exec(re, extra, subject, length, 0, 0, ovector, 30);
/* Check results */
pcre_free(re);
pcre_free_study(extra);
pcre_jit_stack_free(jit_stack);
JIT FAST PATH API
Because the API described above falls back to interpreted execution
when JIT is not available, it is convenient for programs that are writ-
ten for general use in many environments. However, calling JIT via
pcre_exec() does have a performance impact. Programs that are written
for use where JIT is known to be available, and which need the best
possible performance, can instead use a "fast path" API to call JIT
execution directly instead of calling pcre_exec() (obviously only for
patterns that have been successfully studied by JIT).
The fast path function is called pcre_jit_exec(), and it takes exactly
the same arguments as pcre_exec(), plus one additional argument that
must point to a JIT stack. The JIT stack arrangements described above
do not apply. The return values are the same as for pcre_exec().
When you call pcre_exec(), as well as testing for invalid options, a
number of other sanity checks are performed on the arguments. For exam-
ple, if the subject pointer is NULL, or its length is negative, an
immediate error is given. Also, unless PCRE_NO_UTF[8|16|32] is set, a
UTF subject string is tested for validity. In the interests of speed,
these checks do not happen on the JIT fast path, and if invalid data is
passed, the result is undefined.
Bypassing the sanity checks and the pcre_exec() wrapping can give
speedups of more than 10%.
Note that the pcre_jit_exec() function is not available in versions of
PCRE before 8.32 (released in November 2012). If you need to support
versions that old you must either use the slower pcre_exec(), or switch
between the two codepaths by checking the values of PCRE_MAJOR and
PCRE_MINOR.
Due to an unfortunate implementation oversight, even in versions 8.32
and later there will be no pcre_jit_exec() stub function defined when
PCRE is compiled with --disable-jit, which is the default, and there's
no way to detect whether PCRE was compiled with --enable-jit via a
macro.
If you need to support versions older than 8.32, or versions that may
not build with --enable-jit, you must either use the slower
pcre_exec(), or switch between the two codepaths by checking the values
of PCRE_MAJOR and PCRE_MINOR.
Switching between the two by checking the version assumes that all the
versions being targeted are built with --enable-jit. To also support
builds that may use --disable-jit either pcre_exec() must be used, or a
compile-time check for JIT via pcre_config() (which assumes the runtime
environment will be the same), or as the Git project decided to do,
simply assume that pcre_jit_exec() is present in 8.32 or later unless a
compile-time flag is provided, see the "grep: un-break building with
PCRE >= 8.32 without --enable-jit" commit in git.git for an example of
that.
SEE ALSO
pcreapi(3)
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel (FAQ by Zoltan Herczeg)
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 05 July 2017
Copyright (c) 1997-2017 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCREPARTIAL(3) Library Functions Manual PCREPARTIAL(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
PARTIAL MATCHING IN PCRE
In normal use of PCRE, if the subject string that is passed to a match-
ing function matches as far as it goes, but is too short to match the
entire pattern, PCRE_ERROR_NOMATCH is returned. There are circumstances
where it might be helpful to distinguish this case from other cases in
which there is no match.
Consider, for example, an application where a human is required to type
in data for a field with specific formatting requirements. An example
might be a date in the form ddmmmyy, defined by this pattern:
^\d?\d(jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|jul|aug|sep|oct|nov|dec)\d\d$
If the application sees the user's keystrokes one by one, and can check
that what has been typed so far is potentially valid, it is able to
raise an error as soon as a mistake is made, by beeping and not
reflecting the character that has been typed, for example. This immedi-
ate feedback is likely to be a better user interface than a check that
is delayed until the entire string has been entered. Partial matching
can also be useful when the subject string is very long and is not all
available at once.
PCRE supports partial matching by means of the PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT and
PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD options, which can be set when calling any of the
matching functions. For backwards compatibility, PCRE_PARTIAL is a syn-
onym for PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT. The essential difference between the two
options is whether or not a partial match is preferred to an alterna-
tive complete match, though the details differ between the two types of
matching function. If both options are set, PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD takes
precedence.
If you want to use partial matching with just-in-time optimized code,
you must call pcre_study(), pcre16_study() or pcre32_study() with one
or both of these options:
PCRE_STUDY_JIT_PARTIAL_SOFT_COMPILE
PCRE_STUDY_JIT_PARTIAL_HARD_COMPILE
PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE should also be set if you are going to run non-
partial matches on the same pattern. If the appropriate JIT study mode
has not been set for a match, the interpretive matching code is used.
Setting a partial matching option disables two of PCRE's standard opti-
mizations. PCRE remembers the last literal data unit in a pattern, and
abandons matching immediately if it is not present in the subject
string. This optimization cannot be used for a subject string that
might match only partially. If the pattern was studied, PCRE knows the
minimum length of a matching string, and does not bother to run the
matching function on shorter strings. This optimization is also dis-
abled for partial matching.
PARTIAL MATCHING USING pcre_exec() OR pcre[16|32]_exec()
A partial match occurs during a call to pcre_exec() or
pcre[16|32]_exec() when the end of the subject string is reached suc-
cessfully, but matching cannot continue because more characters are
needed. However, at least one character in the subject must have been
inspected. This character need not form part of the final matched
string; lookbehind assertions and the \K escape sequence provide ways
of inspecting characters before the start of a matched substring. The
requirement for inspecting at least one character exists because an
empty string can always be matched; without such a restriction there
would always be a partial match of an empty string at the end of the
subject.
If there are at least two slots in the offsets vector when a partial
match is returned, the first slot is set to the offset of the earliest
character that was inspected. For convenience, the second offset points
to the end of the subject so that a substring can easily be identified.
If there are at least three slots in the offsets vector, the third slot
is set to the offset of the character where matching started.
For the majority of patterns, the contents of the first and third slots
will be the same. However, for patterns that contain lookbehind asser-
tions, or begin with \b or \B, characters before the one where matching
started may have been inspected while carrying out the match. For exam-
ple, consider this pattern:
/(?<=abc)123/
This pattern matches "123", but only if it is preceded by "abc". If the
subject string is "xyzabc12", the first two offsets after a partial
match are for the substring "abc12", because all these characters were
inspected. However, the third offset is set to 6, because that is the
offset where matching began.
What happens when a partial match is identified depends on which of the
two partial matching options are set.
PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT WITH pcre_exec() OR pcre[16|32]_exec()
If PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT is set when pcre_exec() or pcre[16|32]_exec()
identifies a partial match, the partial match is remembered, but match-
ing continues as normal, and other alternatives in the pattern are
tried. If no complete match can be found, PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL is
returned instead of PCRE_ERROR_NOMATCH.
This option is "soft" because it prefers a complete match over a par-
tial match. All the various matching items in a pattern behave as if
the subject string is potentially complete. For example, \z, \Z, and $
match at the end of the subject, as normal, and for \b and \B the end
of the subject is treated as a non-alphanumeric.
If there is more than one partial match, the first one that was found
provides the data that is returned. Consider this pattern:
/123\w+X|dogY/
If this is matched against the subject string "abc123dog", both alter-
natives fail to match, but the end of the subject is reached during
matching, so PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL is returned. The offsets are set to 3
and 9, identifying "123dog" as the first partial match that was found.
(In this example, there are two partial matches, because "dog" on its
own partially matches the second alternative.)
PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD WITH pcre_exec() OR pcre[16|32]_exec()
If PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set for pcre_exec() or pcre[16|32]_exec(),
PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL is returned as soon as a partial match is found,
without continuing to search for possible complete matches. This option
is "hard" because it prefers an earlier partial match over a later com-
plete match. For this reason, the assumption is made that the end of
the supplied subject string may not be the true end of the available
data, and so, if \z, \Z, \b, \B, or $ are encountered at the end of the
subject, the result is PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL, provided that at least one
character in the subject has been inspected.
Setting PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD also affects the way UTF-8 and UTF-16 subject
strings are checked for validity. Normally, an invalid sequence causes
the error PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8 or PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF16. However, in the
special case of a truncated character at the end of the subject,
PCRE_ERROR_SHORTUTF8 or PCRE_ERROR_SHORTUTF16 is returned when
PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set.
Comparing hard and soft partial matching
The difference between the two partial matching options can be illus-
trated by a pattern such as:
/dog(sbody)?/
This matches either "dog" or "dogsbody", greedily (that is, it prefers
the longer string if possible). If it is matched against the string
"dog" with PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT, it yields a complete match for "dog".
However, if PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set, the result is PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL.
On the other hand, if the pattern is made ungreedy the result is dif-
ferent:
/dog(sbody)??/
In this case the result is always a complete match because that is
found first, and matching never continues after finding a complete
match. It might be easier to follow this explanation by thinking of the
two patterns like this:
/dog(sbody)?/ is the same as /dogsbody|dog/
/dog(sbody)??/ is the same as /dog|dogsbody/
The second pattern will never match "dogsbody", because it will always
find the shorter match first.
PARTIAL MATCHING USING pcre_dfa_exec() OR pcre[16|32]_dfa_exec()
The DFA functions move along the subject string character by character,
without backtracking, searching for all possible matches simultane-
ously. If the end of the subject is reached before the end of the pat-
tern, there is the possibility of a partial match, again provided that
at least one character has been inspected.
When PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT is set, PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL is returned only if
there have been no complete matches. Otherwise, the complete matches
are returned. However, if PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set, a partial match
takes precedence over any complete matches. The portion of the string
that was inspected when the longest partial match was found is set as
the first matching string, provided there are at least two slots in the
offsets vector.
Because the DFA functions always search for all possible matches, and
there is no difference between greedy and ungreedy repetition, their
behaviour is different from the standard functions when PCRE_PAR-
TIAL_HARD is set. Consider the string "dog" matched against the
ungreedy pattern shown above:
/dog(sbody)??/
Whereas the standard functions stop as soon as they find the complete
match for "dog", the DFA functions also find the partial match for
"dogsbody", and so return that when PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set.
PARTIAL MATCHING AND WORD BOUNDARIES
If a pattern ends with one of sequences \b or \B, which test for word
boundaries, partial matching with PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT can give counter-
intuitive results. Consider this pattern:
/\bcat\b/
This matches "cat", provided there is a word boundary at either end. If
the subject string is "the cat", the comparison of the final "t" with a
following character cannot take place, so a partial match is found.
However, normal matching carries on, and \b matches at the end of the
subject when the last character is a letter, so a complete match is
found. The result, therefore, is not PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL. Using
PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD in this case does yield PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL, because
then the partial match takes precedence.
FORMERLY RESTRICTED PATTERNS
For releases of PCRE prior to 8.00, because of the way certain internal
optimizations were implemented in the pcre_exec() function, the
PCRE_PARTIAL option (predecessor of PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT) could not be
used with all patterns. From release 8.00 onwards, the restrictions no
longer apply, and partial matching with can be requested for any pat-
tern.
Items that were formerly restricted were repeated single characters and
repeated metasequences. If PCRE_PARTIAL was set for a pattern that did
not conform to the restrictions, pcre_exec() returned the error code
PCRE_ERROR_BADPARTIAL (-13). This error code is no longer in use. The
PCRE_INFO_OKPARTIAL call to pcre_fullinfo() to find out if a compiled
pattern can be used for partial matching now always returns 1.
EXAMPLE OF PARTIAL MATCHING USING PCRETEST
If the escape sequence \P is present in a pcretest data line, the
PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT option is used for the match. Here is a run of
pcretest that uses the date example quoted above:
re> /^\d?\d(jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|jul|aug|sep|oct|nov|dec)\d\d$/
data> 25jun04\P
0: 25jun04
1: jun
data> 25dec3\P
Partial match: 23dec3
data> 3ju\P
Partial match: 3ju
data> 3juj\P
No match
data> j\P
No match
The first data string is matched completely, so pcretest shows the
matched substrings. The remaining four strings do not match the com-
plete pattern, but the first two are partial matches. Similar output is
obtained if DFA matching is used.
If the escape sequence \P is present more than once in a pcretest data
line, the PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD option is set for the match.
MULTI-SEGMENT MATCHING WITH pcre_dfa_exec() OR pcre[16|32]_dfa_exec()
When a partial match has been found using a DFA matching function, it
is possible to continue the match by providing additional subject data
and calling the function again with the same compiled regular expres-
sion, this time setting the PCRE_DFA_RESTART option. You must pass the
same working space as before, because this is where details of the pre-
vious partial match are stored. Here is an example using pcretest,
using the \R escape sequence to set the PCRE_DFA_RESTART option (\D
specifies the use of the DFA matching function):
re> /^\d?\d(jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|jul|aug|sep|oct|nov|dec)\d\d$/
data> 23ja\P\D
Partial match: 23ja
data> n05\R\D
0: n05
The first call has "23ja" as the subject, and requests partial match-
ing; the second call has "n05" as the subject for the continued
(restarted) match. Notice that when the match is complete, only the
last part is shown; PCRE does not retain the previously partially-
matched string. It is up to the calling program to do that if it needs
to.
That means that, for an unanchored pattern, if a continued match fails,
it is not possible to try again at a new starting point. All this
facility is capable of doing is continuing with the previous match
attempt. In the previous example, if the second set of data is "ug23"
the result is no match, even though there would be a match for "aug23"
if the entire string were given at once. Depending on the application,
this may or may not be what you want. The only way to allow for start-
ing again at the next character is to retain the matched part of the
subject and try a new complete match.
You can set the PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT or PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD options with
PCRE_DFA_RESTART to continue partial matching over multiple segments.
This facility can be used to pass very long subject strings to the DFA
matching functions.
MULTI-SEGMENT MATCHING WITH pcre_exec() OR pcre[16|32]_exec()
From release 8.00, the standard matching functions can also be used to
do multi-segment matching. Unlike the DFA functions, it is not possible
to restart the previous match with a new segment of data. Instead, new
data must be added to the previous subject string, and the entire match
re-run, starting from the point where the partial match occurred. Ear-
lier data can be discarded.
It is best to use PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD in this situation, because it does
not treat the end of a segment as the end of the subject when matching
\z, \Z, \b, \B, and $. Consider an unanchored pattern that matches
dates:
re> /\d?\d(jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|jul|aug|sep|oct|nov|dec)\d\d/
data> The date is 23ja\P\P
Partial match: 23ja
At this stage, an application could discard the text preceding "23ja",
add on text from the next segment, and call the matching function
again. Unlike the DFA matching functions, the entire matching string
must always be available, and the complete matching process occurs for
each call, so more memory and more processing time is needed.
Note: If the pattern contains lookbehind assertions, or \K, or starts
with \b or \B, the string that is returned for a partial match includes
characters that precede the start of what would be returned for a com-
plete match, because it contains all the characters that were inspected
during the partial match.
ISSUES WITH MULTI-SEGMENT MATCHING
Certain types of pattern may give problems with multi-segment matching,
whichever matching function is used.
1. If the pattern contains a test for the beginning of a line, you need
to pass the PCRE_NOTBOL option when the subject string for any call
does start at the beginning of a line. There is also a PCRE_NOTEOL
option, but in practice when doing multi-segment matching you should be
using PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD, which includes the effect of PCRE_NOTEOL.
2. Lookbehind assertions that have already been obeyed are catered for
in the offsets that are returned for a partial match. However a lookbe-
hind assertion later in the pattern could require even earlier charac-
ters to be inspected. You can handle this case by using the
PCRE_INFO_MAXLOOKBEHIND option of the pcre_fullinfo() or
pcre[16|32]_fullinfo() functions to obtain the length of the longest
lookbehind in the pattern. This length is given in characters, not
bytes. If you always retain at least that many characters before the
partially matched string, all should be well. (Of course, near the
start of the subject, fewer characters may be present; in that case all
characters should be retained.)
From release 8.33, there is a more accurate way of deciding which char-
acters to retain. Instead of subtracting the length of the longest
lookbehind from the earliest inspected character (offsets[0]), the
match start position (offsets[2]) should be used, and the next match
attempt started at the offsets[2] character by setting the startoffset
argument of pcre_exec() or pcre_dfa_exec().
For example, if the pattern "(?<=123)abc" is partially matched against
the string "xx123a", the three offset values returned are 2, 6, and 5.
This indicates that the matching process that gave a partial match
started at offset 5, but the characters "123a" were all inspected. The
maximum lookbehind for that pattern is 3, so taking that away from 5
shows that we need only keep "123a", and the next match attempt can be
started at offset 3 (that is, at "a") when further characters have been
added. When the match start is not the earliest inspected character,
pcretest shows it explicitly:
re> "(?<=123)abc"
data> xx123a\P\P
Partial match at offset 5: 123a
3. Because a partial match must always contain at least one character,
what might be considered a partial match of an empty string actually
gives a "no match" result. For example:
re> /c(?<=abc)x/
data> ab\P
No match
If the next segment begins "cx", a match should be found, but this will
only happen if characters from the previous segment are retained. For
this reason, a "no match" result should be interpreted as "partial
match of an empty string" when the pattern contains lookbehinds.
4. Matching a subject string that is split into multiple segments may
not always produce exactly the same result as matching over one single
long string, especially when PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT is used. The section
"Partial Matching and Word Boundaries" above describes an issue that
arises if the pattern ends with \b or \B. Another kind of difference
may occur when there are multiple matching possibilities, because (for
PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT) a partial match result is given only when there are
no completed matches. This means that as soon as the shortest match has
been found, continuation to a new subject segment is no longer possi-
ble. Consider again this pcretest example:
re> /dog(sbody)?/
data> dogsb\P
0: dog
data> do\P\D
Partial match: do
data> gsb\R\P\D
0: g
data> dogsbody\D
0: dogsbody
1: dog
The first data line passes the string "dogsb" to a standard matching
function, setting the PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT option. Although the string is
a partial match for "dogsbody", the result is not PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL,
because the shorter string "dog" is a complete match. Similarly, when
the subject is presented to a DFA matching function in several parts
("do" and "gsb" being the first two) the match stops when "dog" has
been found, and it is not possible to continue. On the other hand, if
"dogsbody" is presented as a single string, a DFA matching function
finds both matches.
Because of these problems, it is best to use PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD when
matching multi-segment data. The example above then behaves differ-
ently:
re> /dog(sbody)?/
data> dogsb\P\P
Partial match: dogsb
data> do\P\D
Partial match: do
data> gsb\R\P\P\D
Partial match: gsb
5. Patterns that contain alternatives at the top level which do not all
start with the same pattern item may not work as expected when
PCRE_DFA_RESTART is used. For example, consider this pattern:
1234|3789
If the first part of the subject is "ABC123", a partial match of the
first alternative is found at offset 3. There is no partial match for
the second alternative, because such a match does not start at the same
point in the subject string. Attempting to continue with the string
"7890" does not yield a match because only those alternatives that
match at one point in the subject are remembered. The problem arises
because the start of the second alternative matches within the first
alternative. There is no problem with anchored patterns or patterns
such as:
1234|ABCD
where no string can be a partial match for both alternatives. This is
not a problem if a standard matching function is used, because the
entire match has to be rerun each time:
re> /1234|3789/
data> ABC123\P\P
Partial match: 123
data> 1237890
0: 3789
Of course, instead of using PCRE_DFA_RESTART, the same technique of re-
running the entire match can also be used with the DFA matching func-
tions. Another possibility is to work with two buffers. If a partial
match at offset n in the first buffer is followed by "no match" when
PCRE_DFA_RESTART is used on the second buffer, you can then try a new
match starting at offset n+1 in the first buffer.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 02 July 2013
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCREPRECOMPILE(3) Library Functions Manual PCREPRECOMPILE(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
SAVING AND RE-USING PRECOMPILED PCRE PATTERNS
If you are running an application that uses a large number of regular
expression patterns, it may be useful to store them in a precompiled
form instead of having to compile them every time the application is
run. If you are not using any private character tables (see the
pcre_maketables() documentation), this is relatively straightforward.
If you are using private tables, it is a little bit more complicated.
However, if you are using the just-in-time optimization feature, it is
not possible to save and reload the JIT data.
If you save compiled patterns to a file, you can copy them to a differ-
ent host and run them there. If the two hosts have different endianness
(byte order), you should run the pcre[16|32]_pat-
tern_to_host_byte_order() function on the new host before trying to
match the pattern. The matching functions return PCRE_ERROR_BADENDIAN-
NESS if they detect a pattern with the wrong endianness.
Compiling regular expressions with one version of PCRE for use with a
different version is not guaranteed to work and may cause crashes, and
saving and restoring a compiled pattern loses any JIT optimization
data.
SAVING A COMPILED PATTERN
The value returned by pcre[16|32]_compile() points to a single block of
memory that holds the compiled pattern and associated data. You can
find the length of this block in bytes by calling
pcre[16|32]_fullinfo() with an argument of PCRE_INFO_SIZE. You can then
save the data in any appropriate manner. Here is sample code for the
8-bit library that compiles a pattern and writes it to a file. It
assumes that the variable fd refers to a file that is open for output:
int erroroffset, rc, size;
char *error;
pcre *re;
re = pcre_compile("my pattern", 0, &error, &erroroffset, NULL);
if (re == NULL) { ... handle errors ... }
rc = pcre_fullinfo(re, NULL, PCRE_INFO_SIZE, &size);
if (rc < 0) { ... handle errors ... }
rc = fwrite(re, 1, size, fd);
if (rc != size) { ... handle errors ... }
In this example, the bytes that comprise the compiled pattern are
copied exactly. Note that this is binary data that may contain any of
the 256 possible byte values. On systems that make a distinction
between binary and non-binary data, be sure that the file is opened for
binary output.
If you want to write more than one pattern to a file, you will have to
devise a way of separating them. For binary data, preceding each pat-
tern with its length is probably the most straightforward approach.
Another possibility is to write out the data in hexadecimal instead of
binary, one pattern to a line.
Saving compiled patterns in a file is only one possible way of storing
them for later use. They could equally well be saved in a database, or
in the memory of some daemon process that passes them via sockets to
the processes that want them.
If the pattern has been studied, it is also possible to save the normal
study data in a similar way to the compiled pattern itself. However, if
the PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE was used, the just-in-time data that is cre-
ated cannot be saved because it is too dependent on the current envi-
ronment. When studying generates additional information,
pcre[16|32]_study() returns a pointer to a pcre[16|32]_extra data
block. Its format is defined in the section on matching a pattern in
the pcreapi documentation. The study_data field points to the binary
study data, and this is what you must save (not the pcre[16|32]_extra
block itself). The length of the study data can be obtained by calling
pcre[16|32]_fullinfo() with an argument of PCRE_INFO_STUDYSIZE. Remem-
ber to check that pcre[16|32]_study() did return a non-NULL value
before trying to save the study data.
RE-USING A PRECOMPILED PATTERN
Re-using a precompiled pattern is straightforward. Having reloaded it
into main memory, called pcre[16|32]_pattern_to_host_byte_order() if
necessary, you pass its pointer to pcre[16|32]_exec() or
pcre[16|32]_dfa_exec() in the usual way.
However, if you passed a pointer to custom character tables when the
pattern was compiled (the tableptr argument of pcre[16|32]_compile()),
you must now pass a similar pointer to pcre[16|32]_exec() or
pcre[16|32]_dfa_exec(), because the value saved with the compiled pat-
tern will obviously be nonsense. A field in a pcre[16|32]_extra() block
is used to pass this data, as described in the section on matching a
pattern in the pcreapi documentation.
Warning: The tables that pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec() use must be
the same as those that were used when the pattern was compiled. If this
is not the case, the behaviour is undefined.
If you did not provide custom character tables when the pattern was
compiled, the pointer in the compiled pattern is NULL, which causes the
matching functions to use PCRE's internal tables. Thus, you do not need
to take any special action at run time in this case.
If you saved study data with the compiled pattern, you need to create
your own pcre[16|32]_extra data block and set the study_data field to
point to the reloaded study data. You must also set the
PCRE_EXTRA_STUDY_DATA bit in the flags field to indicate that study
data is present. Then pass the pcre[16|32]_extra block to the matching
function in the usual way. If the pattern was studied for just-in-time
optimization, that data cannot be saved, and so is lost by a
save/restore cycle.
COMPATIBILITY WITH DIFFERENT PCRE RELEASES
In general, it is safest to recompile all saved patterns when you
update to a new PCRE release, though not all updates actually require
this.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 12 November 2013
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCREPERFORM(3) Library Functions Manual PCREPERFORM(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
PCRE PERFORMANCE
Two aspects of performance are discussed below: memory usage and pro-
cessing time. The way you express your pattern as a regular expression
can affect both of them.
COMPILED PATTERN MEMORY USAGE
Patterns are compiled by PCRE into a reasonably efficient interpretive
code, so that most simple patterns do not use much memory. However,
there is one case where the memory usage of a compiled pattern can be
unexpectedly large. If a parenthesized subpattern has a quantifier with
a minimum greater than 1 and/or a limited maximum, the whole subpattern
is repeated in the compiled code. For example, the pattern
(abc|def){2,4}
is compiled as if it were
(abc|def)(abc|def)((abc|def)(abc|def)?)?
(Technical aside: It is done this way so that backtrack points within
each of the repetitions can be independently maintained.)
For regular expressions whose quantifiers use only small numbers, this
is not usually a problem. However, if the numbers are large, and par-
ticularly if such repetitions are nested, the memory usage can become
an embarrassment. For example, the very simple pattern
((ab){1,1000}c){1,3}
uses 51K bytes when compiled using the 8-bit library. When PCRE is com-
piled with its default internal pointer size of two bytes, the size
limit on a compiled pattern is 64K data units, and this is reached with
the above pattern if the outer repetition is increased from 3 to 4.
PCRE can be compiled to use larger internal pointers and thus handle
larger compiled patterns, but it is better to try to rewrite your pat-
tern to use less memory if you can.
One way of reducing the memory usage for such patterns is to make use
of PCRE's "subroutine" facility. Re-writing the above pattern as
((ab)(?2){0,999}c)(?1){0,2}
reduces the memory requirements to 18K, and indeed it remains under 20K
even with the outer repetition increased to 100. However, this pattern
is not exactly equivalent, because the "subroutine" calls are treated
as atomic groups into which there can be no backtracking if there is a
subsequent matching failure. Therefore, PCRE cannot do this kind of
rewriting automatically. Furthermore, there is a noticeable loss of
speed when executing the modified pattern. Nevertheless, if the atomic
grouping is not a problem and the loss of speed is acceptable, this
kind of rewriting will allow you to process patterns that PCRE cannot
otherwise handle.
STACK USAGE AT RUN TIME
When pcre_exec() or pcre[16|32]_exec() is used for matching, certain
kinds of pattern can cause it to use large amounts of the process
stack. In some environments the default process stack is quite small,
and if it runs out the result is often SIGSEGV. This issue is probably
the most frequently raised problem with PCRE. Rewriting your pattern
can often help. The pcrestack documentation discusses this issue in
detail.
PROCESSING TIME
Certain items in regular expression patterns are processed more effi-
ciently than others. It is more efficient to use a character class like
[aeiou] than a set of single-character alternatives such as
(a|e|i|o|u). In general, the simplest construction that provides the
required behaviour is usually the most efficient. Jeffrey Friedl's book
contains a lot of useful general discussion about optimizing regular
expressions for efficient performance. This document contains a few
observations about PCRE.
Using Unicode character properties (the \p, \P, and \X escapes) is
slow, because PCRE has to use a multi-stage table lookup whenever it
needs a character's property. If you can find an alternative pattern
that does not use character properties, it will probably be faster.
By default, the escape sequences \b, \d, \s, and \w, and the POSIX
character classes such as [:alpha:] do not use Unicode properties,
partly for backwards compatibility, and partly for performance reasons.
However, you can set PCRE_UCP if you want Unicode character properties
to be used. This can double the matching time for items such as \d,
when matched with a traditional matching function; the performance loss
is less with a DFA matching function, and in both cases there is not
much difference for \b.
When a pattern begins with .* not in parentheses, or in parentheses
that are not the subject of a backreference, and the PCRE_DOTALL option
is set, the pattern is implicitly anchored by PCRE, since it can match
only at the start of a subject string. However, if PCRE_DOTALL is not
set, PCRE cannot make this optimization, because the . metacharacter
does not then match a newline, and if the subject string contains new-
lines, the pattern may match from the character immediately following
one of them instead of from the very start. For example, the pattern
.*second
matches the subject "first\nand second" (where \n stands for a newline
character), with the match starting at the seventh character. In order
to do this, PCRE has to retry the match starting after every newline in
the subject.
If you are using such a pattern with subject strings that do not con-
tain newlines, the best performance is obtained by setting PCRE_DOTALL,
or starting the pattern with ^.* or ^.*? to indicate explicit anchor-
ing. That saves PCRE from having to scan along the subject looking for
a newline to restart at.
Beware of patterns that contain nested indefinite repeats. These can
take a long time to run when applied to a string that does not match.
Consider the pattern fragment
^(a+)*
This can match "aaaa" in 16 different ways, and this number increases
very rapidly as the string gets longer. (The * repeat can match 0, 1,
2, 3, or 4 times, and for each of those cases other than 0 or 4, the +
repeats can match different numbers of times.) When the remainder of
the pattern is such that the entire match is going to fail, PCRE has in
principle to try every possible variation, and this can take an
extremely long time, even for relatively short strings.
An optimization catches some of the more simple cases such as
(a+)*b
where a literal character follows. Before embarking on the standard
matching procedure, PCRE checks that there is a "b" later in the sub-
ject string, and if there is not, it fails the match immediately. How-
ever, when there is no following literal this optimization cannot be
used. You can see the difference by comparing the behaviour of
(a+)*\d
with the pattern above. The former gives a failure almost instantly
when applied to a whole line of "a" characters, whereas the latter
takes an appreciable time with strings longer than about 20 characters.
In many cases, the solution to this kind of performance issue is to use
an atomic group or a possessive quantifier.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 25 August 2012
Copyright (c) 1997-2012 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCREPOSIX(3) Library Functions Manual PCREPOSIX(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions.
SYNOPSIS
#include <pcreposix.h>
int regcomp(regex_t *preg, const char *pattern,
int cflags);
int regexec(regex_t *preg, const char *string,
size_t nmatch, regmatch_t pmatch[], int eflags);
size_t regerror(int errcode, const regex_t *preg,
char *errbuf, size_t errbuf_size);
void regfree(regex_t *preg);
DESCRIPTION
This set of functions provides a POSIX-style API for the PCRE regular
expression 8-bit library. See the pcreapi documentation for a descrip-
tion of PCRE's native API, which contains much additional functional-
ity. There is no POSIX-style wrapper for PCRE's 16-bit and 32-bit
library.
The functions described here are just wrapper functions that ultimately
call the PCRE native API. Their prototypes are defined in the
pcreposix.h header file, and on Unix systems the library itself is
called pcreposix.a, so can be accessed by adding -lpcreposix to the
command for linking an application that uses them. Because the POSIX
functions call the native ones, it is also necessary to add -lpcre.
I have implemented only those POSIX option bits that can be reasonably
mapped to PCRE native options. In addition, the option REG_EXTENDED is
defined with the value zero. This has no effect, but since programs
that are written to the POSIX interface often use it, this makes it
easier to slot in PCRE as a replacement library. Other POSIX options
are not even defined.
There are also some other options that are not defined by POSIX. These
have been added at the request of users who want to make use of certain
PCRE-specific features via the POSIX calling interface.
When PCRE is called via these functions, it is only the API that is
POSIX-like in style. The syntax and semantics of the regular expres-
sions themselves are still those of Perl, subject to the setting of
various PCRE options, as described below. "POSIX-like in style" means
that the API approximates to the POSIX definition; it is not fully
POSIX-compatible, and in multi-byte encoding domains it is probably
even less compatible.
The header for these functions is supplied as pcreposix.h to avoid any
potential clash with other POSIX libraries. It can, of course, be
renamed or aliased as regex.h, which is the "correct" name. It provides
two structure types, regex_t for compiled internal forms, and reg-
match_t for returning captured substrings. It also defines some con-
stants whose names start with "REG_"; these are used for setting
options and identifying error codes.
COMPILING A PATTERN
The function regcomp() is called to compile a pattern into an internal
form. The pattern is a C string terminated by a binary zero, and is
passed in the argument pattern. The preg argument is a pointer to a
regex_t structure that is used as a base for storing information about
the compiled regular expression.
The argument cflags is either zero, or contains one or more of the bits
defined by the following macros:
REG_DOTALL
The PCRE_DOTALL option is set when the regular expression is passed for
compilation to the native function. Note that REG_DOTALL is not part of
the POSIX standard.
REG_ICASE
The PCRE_CASELESS option is set when the regular expression is passed
for compilation to the native function.
REG_NEWLINE
The PCRE_MULTILINE option is set when the regular expression is passed
for compilation to the native function. Note that this does not mimic
the defined POSIX behaviour for REG_NEWLINE (see the following sec-
tion).
REG_NOSUB
The PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE option is set when the regular expression is
passed for compilation to the native function. In addition, when a pat-
tern that is compiled with this flag is passed to regexec() for match-
ing, the nmatch and pmatch arguments are ignored, and no captured
strings are returned.
REG_UCP
The PCRE_UCP option is set when the regular expression is passed for
compilation to the native function. This causes PCRE to use Unicode
properties when matchine \d, \w, etc., instead of just recognizing
ASCII values. Note that REG_UTF8 is not part of the POSIX standard.
REG_UNGREEDY
The PCRE_UNGREEDY option is set when the regular expression is passed
for compilation to the native function. Note that REG_UNGREEDY is not
part of the POSIX standard.
REG_UTF8
The PCRE_UTF8 option is set when the regular expression is passed for
compilation to the native function. This causes the pattern itself and
all data strings used for matching it to be treated as UTF-8 strings.
Note that REG_UTF8 is not part of the POSIX standard.
In the absence of these flags, no options are passed to the native
function. This means the the regex is compiled with PCRE default
semantics. In particular, the way it handles newline characters in the
subject string is the Perl way, not the POSIX way. Note that setting
PCRE_MULTILINE has only some of the effects specified for REG_NEWLINE.
It does not affect the way newlines are matched by . (they are not) or
by a negative class such as [^a] (they are).
The yield of regcomp() is zero on success, and non-zero otherwise. The
preg structure is filled in on success, and one member of the structure
is public: re_nsub contains the number of capturing subpatterns in the
regular expression. Various error codes are defined in the header file.
NOTE: If the yield of regcomp() is non-zero, you must not attempt to
use the contents of the preg structure. If, for example, you pass it to
regexec(), the result is undefined and your program is likely to crash.
MATCHING NEWLINE CHARACTERS
This area is not simple, because POSIX and Perl take different views of
things. It is not possible to get PCRE to obey POSIX semantics, but
then PCRE was never intended to be a POSIX engine. The following table
lists the different possibilities for matching newline characters in
PCRE:
Default Change with
. matches newline no PCRE_DOTALL
newline matches [^a] yes not changeable
$ matches \n at end yes PCRE_DOLLARENDONLY
$ matches \n in middle no PCRE_MULTILINE
^ matches \n in middle no PCRE_MULTILINE
This is the equivalent table for POSIX:
Default Change with
. matches newline yes REG_NEWLINE
newline matches [^a] yes REG_NEWLINE
$ matches \n at end no REG_NEWLINE
$ matches \n in middle no REG_NEWLINE
^ matches \n in middle no REG_NEWLINE
PCRE's behaviour is the same as Perl's, except that there is no equiva-
lent for PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY in Perl. In both PCRE and Perl, there is
no way to stop newline from matching [^a].
The default POSIX newline handling can be obtained by setting
PCRE_DOTALL and PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY, but there is no way to make PCRE
behave exactly as for the REG_NEWLINE action.
MATCHING A PATTERN
The function regexec() is called to match a compiled pattern preg
against a given string, which is by default terminated by a zero byte
(but see REG_STARTEND below), subject to the options in eflags. These
can be:
REG_NOTBOL
The PCRE_NOTBOL option is set when calling the underlying PCRE matching
function.
REG_NOTEMPTY
The PCRE_NOTEMPTY option is set when calling the underlying PCRE match-
ing function. Note that REG_NOTEMPTY is not part of the POSIX standard.
However, setting this option can give more POSIX-like behaviour in some
situations.
REG_NOTEOL
The PCRE_NOTEOL option is set when calling the underlying PCRE matching
function.
REG_STARTEND
The string is considered to start at string + pmatch[0].rm_so and to
have a terminating NUL located at string + pmatch[0].rm_eo (there need
not actually be a NUL at that location), regardless of the value of
nmatch. This is a BSD extension, compatible with but not specified by
IEEE Standard 1003.2 (POSIX.2), and should be used with caution in
software intended to be portable to other systems. Note that a non-zero
rm_so does not imply REG_NOTBOL; REG_STARTEND affects only the location
of the string, not how it is matched.
If the pattern was compiled with the REG_NOSUB flag, no data about any
matched strings is returned. The nmatch and pmatch arguments of
regexec() are ignored.
If the value of nmatch is zero, or if the value pmatch is NULL, no data
about any matched strings is returned.
Otherwise,the portion of the string that was matched, and also any cap-
tured substrings, are returned via the pmatch argument, which points to
an array of nmatch structures of type regmatch_t, containing the mem-
bers rm_so and rm_eo. These contain the offset to the first character
of each substring and the offset to the first character after the end
of each substring, respectively. The 0th element of the vector relates
to the entire portion of string that was matched; subsequent elements
relate to the capturing subpatterns of the regular expression. Unused
entries in the array have both structure members set to -1.
A successful match yields a zero return; various error codes are
defined in the header file, of which REG_NOMATCH is the "expected"
failure code.
ERROR MESSAGES
The regerror() function maps a non-zero errorcode from either regcomp()
or regexec() to a printable message. If preg is not NULL, the error
should have arisen from the use of that structure. A message terminated
by a binary zero is placed in errbuf. The length of the message,
including the zero, is limited to errbuf_size. The yield of the func-
tion is the size of buffer needed to hold the whole message.
MEMORY USAGE
Compiling a regular expression causes memory to be allocated and asso-
ciated with the preg structure. The function regfree() frees all such
memory, after which preg may no longer be used as a compiled expres-
sion.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 09 January 2012
Copyright (c) 1997-2012 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCRECPP(3) Library Functions Manual PCRECPP(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions.
SYNOPSIS OF C++ WRAPPER
#include <pcrecpp.h>
DESCRIPTION
The C++ wrapper for PCRE was provided by Google Inc. Some additional
functionality was added by Giuseppe Maxia. This brief man page was con-
structed from the notes in the pcrecpp.h file, which should be con-
sulted for further details. Note that the C++ wrapper supports only the
original 8-bit PCRE library. There is no 16-bit or 32-bit support at
present.
MATCHING INTERFACE
The "FullMatch" operation checks that supplied text matches a supplied
pattern exactly. If pointer arguments are supplied, it copies matched
sub-strings that match sub-patterns into them.
Example: successful match
pcrecpp::RE re("h.*o");
re.FullMatch("hello");
Example: unsuccessful match (requires full match):
pcrecpp::RE re("e");
!re.FullMatch("hello");
Example: creating a temporary RE object:
pcrecpp::RE("h.*o").FullMatch("hello");
You can pass in a "const char*" or a "string" for "text". The examples
below tend to use a const char*. You can, as in the different examples
above, store the RE object explicitly in a variable or use a temporary
RE object. The examples below use one mode or the other arbitrarily.
Either could correctly be used for any of these examples.
You must supply extra pointer arguments to extract matched subpieces.
Example: extracts "ruby" into "s" and 1234 into "i"
int i;
string s;
pcrecpp::RE re("(\\w+):(\\d+)");
re.FullMatch("ruby:1234", &s, &i);
Example: does not try to extract any extra sub-patterns
re.FullMatch("ruby:1234", &s);
Example: does not try to extract into NULL
re.FullMatch("ruby:1234", NULL, &i);
Example: integer overflow causes failure
!re.FullMatch("ruby:1234567891234", NULL, &i);
Example: fails because there aren't enough sub-patterns:
!pcrecpp::RE("\\w+:\\d+").FullMatch("ruby:1234", &s);
Example: fails because string cannot be stored in integer
!pcrecpp::RE("(.*)").FullMatch("ruby", &i);
The provided pointer arguments can be pointers to any scalar numeric
type, or one of:
string (matched piece is copied to string)
StringPiece (StringPiece is mutated to point to matched piece)
T (where "bool T::ParseFrom(const char*, int)" exists)
NULL (the corresponding matched sub-pattern is not copied)
The function returns true iff all of the following conditions are sat-
isfied:
a. "text" matches "pattern" exactly;
b. The number of matched sub-patterns is >= number of supplied
pointers;
c. The "i"th argument has a suitable type for holding the
string captured as the "i"th sub-pattern. If you pass in
void * NULL for the "i"th argument, or a non-void * NULL
of the correct type, or pass fewer arguments than the
number of sub-patterns, "i"th captured sub-pattern is
ignored.
CAVEAT: An optional sub-pattern that does not exist in the matched
string is assigned the empty string. Therefore, the following will
return false (because the empty string is not a valid number):
int number;
pcrecpp::RE::FullMatch("abc", "[a-z]+(\\d+)?", &number);
The matching interface supports at most 16 arguments per call. If you
need more, consider using the more general interface
pcrecpp::RE::DoMatch. See pcrecpp.h for the signature for DoMatch.
NOTE: Do not use no_arg, which is used internally to mark the end of a
list of optional arguments, as a placeholder for missing arguments, as
this can lead to segfaults.
QUOTING METACHARACTERS
You can use the "QuoteMeta" operation to insert backslashes before all
potentially meaningful characters in a string. The returned string,
used as a regular expression, will exactly match the original string.
Example:
string quoted = RE::QuoteMeta(unquoted);
Note that it's legal to escape a character even if it has no special
meaning in a regular expression -- so this function does that. (This
also makes it identical to the perl function of the same name; see
"perldoc -f quotemeta".) For example, "1.5-2.0?" becomes
"1\.5\-2\.0\?".
PARTIAL MATCHES
You can use the "PartialMatch" operation when you want the pattern to
match any substring of the text.
Example: simple search for a string:
pcrecpp::RE("ell").PartialMatch("hello");
Example: find first number in a string:
int number;
pcrecpp::RE re("(\\d+)");
re.PartialMatch("x*100 + 20", &number);
assert(number == 100);
UTF-8 AND THE MATCHING INTERFACE
By default, pattern and text are plain text, one byte per character.
The UTF8 flag, passed to the constructor, causes both pattern and
string to be treated as UTF-8 text, still a byte stream but potentially
multiple bytes per character. In practice, the text is likelier to be
UTF-8 than the pattern, but the match returned may depend on the UTF8
flag, so always use it when matching UTF8 text. For example, "." will
match one byte normally but with UTF8 set may match up to three bytes
of a multi-byte character.
Example:
pcrecpp::RE_Options options;
options.set_utf8();
pcrecpp::RE re(utf8_pattern, options);
re.FullMatch(utf8_string);
Example: using the convenience function UTF8():
pcrecpp::RE re(utf8_pattern, pcrecpp::UTF8());
re.FullMatch(utf8_string);
NOTE: The UTF8 flag is ignored if pcre was not configured with the
--enable-utf8 flag.
PASSING MODIFIERS TO THE REGULAR EXPRESSION ENGINE
PCRE defines some modifiers to change the behavior of the regular
expression engine. The C++ wrapper defines an auxiliary class,
RE_Options, as a vehicle to pass such modifiers to a RE class. Cur-
rently, the following modifiers are supported:
modifier description Perl corresponding
PCRE_CASELESS case insensitive match /i
PCRE_MULTILINE multiple lines match /m
PCRE_DOTALL dot matches newlines /s
PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY $ matches only at end N/A
PCRE_EXTRA strict escape parsing N/A
PCRE_EXTENDED ignore white spaces /x
PCRE_UTF8 handles UTF8 chars built-in
PCRE_UNGREEDY reverses * and *? N/A
PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE disables capturing parens N/A (*)
(*) Both Perl and PCRE allow non capturing parentheses by means of the
"?:" modifier within the pattern itself. e.g. (?:ab|cd) does not cap-
ture, while (ab|cd) does.
For a full account on how each modifier works, please check the PCRE
API reference page.
For each modifier, there are two member functions whose name is made
out of the modifier in lowercase, without the "PCRE_" prefix. For
instance, PCRE_CASELESS is handled by
bool caseless()
which returns true if the modifier is set, and
RE_Options & set_caseless(bool)
which sets or unsets the modifier. Moreover, PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT can
be accessed through the set_match_limit() and match_limit() member
functions. Setting match_limit to a non-zero value will limit the exe-
cution of pcre to keep it from doing bad things like blowing the stack
or taking an eternity to return a result. A value of 5000 is good
enough to stop stack blowup in a 2MB thread stack. Setting match_limit
to zero disables match limiting. Alternatively, you can call
match_limit_recursion() which uses PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION to
limit how much PCRE recurses. match_limit() limits the number of
matches PCRE does; match_limit_recursion() limits the depth of internal
recursion, and therefore the amount of stack that is used.
Normally, to pass one or more modifiers to a RE class, you declare a
RE_Options object, set the appropriate options, and pass this object to
a RE constructor. Example:
RE_Options opt;
opt.set_caseless(true);
if (RE("HELLO", opt).PartialMatch("hello world")) ...
RE_options has two constructors. The default constructor takes no argu-
ments and creates a set of flags that are off by default. The optional
parameter option_flags is to facilitate transfer of legacy code from C
programs. This lets you do
RE(pattern,
RE_Options(PCRE_CASELESS|PCRE_MULTILINE)).PartialMatch(str);
However, new code is better off doing
RE(pattern,
RE_Options().set_caseless(true).set_multiline(true))
.PartialMatch(str);
If you are going to pass one of the most used modifiers, there are some
convenience functions that return a RE_Options class with the appropri-
ate modifier already set: CASELESS(), UTF8(), MULTILINE(), DOTALL(),
and EXTENDED().
If you need to set several options at once, and you don't want to go
through the pains of declaring a RE_Options object and setting several
options, there is a parallel method that give you such ability on the
fly. You can concatenate several set_xxxxx() member functions, since
each of them returns a reference to its class object. For example, to
pass PCRE_CASELESS, PCRE_EXTENDED, and PCRE_MULTILINE to a RE with one
statement, you may write:
RE(" ^ xyz \\s+ .* blah$",
RE_Options()
.set_caseless(true)
.set_extended(true)
.set_multiline(true)).PartialMatch(sometext);
SCANNING TEXT INCREMENTALLY
The "Consume" operation may be useful if you want to repeatedly match
regular expressions at the front of a string and skip over them as they
match. This requires use of the "StringPiece" type, which represents a
sub-range of a real string. Like RE, StringPiece is defined in the
pcrecpp namespace.
Example: read lines of the form "var = value" from a string.
string contents = ...; // Fill string somehow
pcrecpp::StringPiece input(contents); // Wrap in a StringPiece
string var;
int value;
pcrecpp::RE re("(\\w+) = (\\d+)\n");
while (re.Consume(&input, &var, &value)) {
...;
}
Each successful call to "Consume" will set "var/value", and also
advance "input" so it points past the matched text.
The "FindAndConsume" operation is similar to "Consume" but does not
anchor your match at the beginning of the string. For example, you
could extract all words from a string by repeatedly calling
pcrecpp::RE("(\\w+)").FindAndConsume(&input, &word)
PARSING HEX/OCTAL/C-RADIX NUMBERS
By default, if you pass a pointer to a numeric value, the corresponding
text is interpreted as a base-10 number. You can instead wrap the
pointer with a call to one of the operators Hex(), Octal(), or CRadix()
to interpret the text in another base. The CRadix operator interprets
C-style "0" (base-8) and "0x" (base-16) prefixes, but defaults to
base-10.
Example:
int a, b, c, d;
pcrecpp::RE re("(.*) (.*) (.*) (.*)");
re.FullMatch("100 40 0100 0x40",
pcrecpp::Octal(&a), pcrecpp::Hex(&b),
pcrecpp::CRadix(&c), pcrecpp::CRadix(&d));
will leave 64 in a, b, c, and d.
REPLACING PARTS OF STRINGS
You can replace the first match of "pattern" in "str" with "rewrite".
Within "rewrite", backslash-escaped digits (\1 to \9) can be used to
insert text matching corresponding parenthesized group from the pat-
tern. \0 in "rewrite" refers to the entire matching text. For example:
string s = "yabba dabba doo";
pcrecpp::RE("b+").Replace("d", &s);
will leave "s" containing "yada dabba doo". The result is true if the
pattern matches and a replacement occurs, false otherwise.
GlobalReplace is like Replace except that it replaces all occurrences
of the pattern in the string with the rewrite. Replacements are not
subject to re-matching. For example:
string s = "yabba dabba doo";
pcrecpp::RE("b+").GlobalReplace("d", &s);
will leave "s" containing "yada dada doo". It returns the number of
replacements made.
Extract is like Replace, except that if the pattern matches, "rewrite"
is copied into "out" (an additional argument) with substitutions. The
non-matching portions of "text" are ignored. Returns true iff a match
occurred and the extraction happened successfully; if no match occurs,
the string is left unaffected.
AUTHOR
The C++ wrapper was contributed by Google Inc.
Copyright (c) 2007 Google Inc.
REVISION
Last updated: 08 January 2012
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCRESAMPLE(3) Library Functions Manual PCRESAMPLE(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
PCRE SAMPLE PROGRAM
A simple, complete demonstration program, to get you started with using
PCRE, is supplied in the file pcredemo.c in the PCRE distribution. A
listing of this program is given in the pcredemo documentation. If you
do not have a copy of the PCRE distribution, you can save this listing
to re-create pcredemo.c.
The demonstration program, which uses the original PCRE 8-bit library,
compiles the regular expression that is its first argument, and matches
it against the subject string in its second argument. No PCRE options
are set, and default character tables are used. If matching succeeds,
the program outputs the portion of the subject that matched, together
with the contents of any captured substrings.
If the -g option is given on the command line, the program then goes on
to check for further matches of the same regular expression in the same
subject string. The logic is a little bit tricky because of the possi-
bility of matching an empty string. Comments in the code explain what
is going on.
If PCRE is installed in the standard include and library directories
for your operating system, you should be able to compile the demonstra-
tion program using this command:
gcc -o pcredemo pcredemo.c -lpcre
If PCRE is installed elsewhere, you may need to add additional options
to the command line. For example, on a Unix-like system that has PCRE
installed in /usr/local, you can compile the demonstration program
using a command like this:
gcc -o pcredemo -I/usr/local/include pcredemo.c \
-L/usr/local/lib -lpcre
In a Windows environment, if you want to statically link the program
against a non-dll pcre.a file, you must uncomment the line that defines
PCRE_STATIC before including pcre.h, because otherwise the pcre_mal-
loc() and pcre_free() exported functions will be declared
__declspec(dllimport), with unwanted results.
Once you have compiled and linked the demonstration program, you can
run simple tests like this:
./pcredemo 'cat|dog' 'the cat sat on the mat'
./pcredemo -g 'cat|dog' 'the dog sat on the cat'
Note that there is a much more comprehensive test program, called
pcretest, which supports many more facilities for testing regular
expressions and both PCRE libraries. The pcredemo program is provided
as a simple coding example.
If you try to run pcredemo when PCRE is not installed in the standard
library directory, you may get an error like this on some operating
systems (e.g. Solaris):
ld.so.1: a.out: fatal: libpcre.so.0: open failed: No such file or
directory
This is caused by the way shared library support works on those sys-
tems. You need to add
-R/usr/local/lib
(for example) to the compile command to get round this problem.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 10 January 2012
Copyright (c) 1997-2012 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCRELIMITS(3) Library Functions Manual PCRELIMITS(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
SIZE AND OTHER LIMITATIONS
There are some size limitations in PCRE but it is hoped that they will
never in practice be relevant.
The maximum length of a compiled pattern is approximately 64K data
units (bytes for the 8-bit library, 16-bit units for the 16-bit
library, and 32-bit units for the 32-bit library) if PCRE is compiled
with the default internal linkage size, which is 2 bytes for the 8-bit
and 16-bit libraries, and 4 bytes for the 32-bit library. If you want
to process regular expressions that are truly enormous, you can compile
PCRE with an internal linkage size of 3 or 4 (when building the 16-bit
or 32-bit library, 3 is rounded up to 4). See the README file in the
source distribution and the pcrebuild documentation for details. In
these cases the limit is substantially larger. However, the speed of
execution is slower.
All values in repeating quantifiers must be less than 65536.
There is no limit to the number of parenthesized subpatterns, but there
can be no more than 65535 capturing subpatterns. There is, however, a
limit to the depth of nesting of parenthesized subpatterns of all
kinds. This is imposed in order to limit the amount of system stack
used at compile time. The limit can be specified when PCRE is built;
the default is 250.
There is a limit to the number of forward references to subsequent sub-
patterns of around 200,000. Repeated forward references with fixed
upper limits, for example, (?2){0,100} when subpattern number 2 is to
the right, are included in the count. There is no limit to the number
of backward references.
The maximum length of name for a named subpattern is 32 characters, and
the maximum number of named subpatterns is 10000.
The maximum length of a name in a (*MARK), (*PRUNE), (*SKIP), or
(*THEN) verb is 255 for the 8-bit library and 65535 for the 16-bit and
32-bit libraries.
The maximum length of a subject string is the largest positive number
that an integer variable can hold. However, when using the traditional
matching function, PCRE uses recursion to handle subpatterns and indef-
inite repetition. This means that the available stack space may limit
the size of a subject string that can be processed by certain patterns.
For a discussion of stack issues, see the pcrestack documentation.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 05 November 2013
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PCRESTACK(3) Library Functions Manual PCRESTACK(3)
NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
PCRE DISCUSSION OF STACK USAGE
When you call pcre[16|32]_exec(), it makes use of an internal function
called match(). This calls itself recursively at branch points in the
pattern, in order to remember the state of the match so that it can
back up and try a different alternative if the first one fails. As
matching proceeds deeper and deeper into the tree of possibilities, the
recursion depth increases. The match() function is also called in other
circumstances, for example, whenever a parenthesized sub-pattern is
entered, and in certain cases of repetition.
Not all calls of match() increase the recursion depth; for an item such
as a* it may be called several times at the same level, after matching
different numbers of a's. Furthermore, in a number of cases where the
result of the recursive call would immediately be passed back as the
result of the current call (a "tail recursion"), the function is just
restarted instead.
The above comments apply when pcre[16|32]_exec() is run in its normal
interpretive manner. If the pattern was studied with the
PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE option, and just-in-time compiling was success-
ful, and the options passed to pcre[16|32]_exec() were not incompati-
ble, the matching process uses the JIT-compiled code instead of the
match() function. In this case, the memory requirements are handled
entirely differently. See the pcrejit documentation for details.
The pcre[16|32]_dfa_exec() function operates in an entirely different
way, and uses recursion only when there is a regular expression recur-
sion or subroutine call in the pattern. This includes the processing of
assertion and "once-only" subpatterns, which are handled like subrou-
tine calls. Normally, these are never very deep, and the limit on the
complexity of pcre[16|32]_dfa_exec() is controlled by the amount of
workspace it is given. However, it is possible to write patterns with
runaway infinite recursions; such patterns will cause
pcre[16|32]_dfa_exec() to run out of stack. At present, there is no
protection against this.
The comments that follow do NOT apply to pcre[16|32]_dfa_exec(); they
are relevant only for pcre[16|32]_exec() without the JIT optimization.
Reducing pcre[16|32]_exec()'s stack usage
Each time that match() is actually called recursively, it uses memory
from the process stack. For certain kinds of pattern and data, very
large amounts of stack may be needed, despite the recognition of "tail
recursion". You can often reduce the amount of recursion, and there-
fore the amount of stack used, by modifying the pattern that is being
matched. Consider, for example, this pattern:
([^<]|<(?!inet))+
It matches from wherever it starts until it encounters "<inet" or the
end of the data, and is the kind of pattern that might be used when
processing an XML file. Each iteration of the outer parentheses matches
either one character that is not "<" or a "<" that is not followed by
"inet". However, each time a parenthesis is processed, a recursion
occurs, so this formulation uses a stack frame for each matched charac-
ter. For a long string, a lot of stack is required. Consider now this
rewritten pattern, which matches exactly the same strings:
([^<]++|<(?!inet))+
This uses very much less stack, because runs of characters that do not
contain "<" are "swallowed" in one item inside the parentheses. Recur-
sion happens only when a "<" character that is not followed by "inet"
is encountered (and we assume this is relatively rare). A possessive
quantifier is used to stop any backtracking into the runs of non-"<"
characters, but that is not related to stack usage.
This example shows that one way of avoiding stack problems when match-
ing long subject strings is to write repeated parenthesized subpatterns
to match more than one character whenever possible.
Compiling PCRE to use heap instead of stack for pcre[16|32]_exec()
In environments where stack memory is constrained, you might want to
compile PCRE to use heap memory instead of stack for remembering back-
up points when pcre[16|32]_exec() is running. This makes it run a lot
more slowly, however. Details of how to do this are given in the pcre-
build documentation. When built in this way, instead of using the
stack, PCRE obtains and frees memory by calling the functions that are
pointed to by the pcre[16|32]_stack_malloc and pcre[16|32]_stack_free
variables. By default, these point to malloc() and free(), but you can
replace the pointers to cause PCRE to use your own functions. Since the
block sizes are always the same, and are always freed in reverse order,
it may be possible to implement customized memory handlers that are
more efficient than the standard functions.
Limiting pcre[16|32]_exec()'s stack usage
You can set limits on the number of times that match() is called, both
in total and recursively. If a limit is exceeded, pcre[16|32]_exec()
returns an error code. Setting suitable limits should prevent it from
running out of stack. The default values of the limits are very large,
and unlikely ever to operate. They can be changed when PCRE is built,
and they can also be set when pcre[16|32]_exec() is called. For details
of these interfaces, see the pcrebuild documentation and the section on
extra data for pcre[16|32]_exec() in the pcreapi documentation.
As a very rough rule of thumb, you should reckon on about 500 bytes per
recursion. Thus, if you want to limit your stack usage to 8Mb, you
should set the limit at 16000 recursions. A 64Mb stack, on the other
hand, can support around 128000 recursions.
In Unix-like environments, the pcretest test program has a command line
option (-S) that can be used to increase the size of its stack. As long
as the stack is large enough, another option (-M) can be used to find
the smallest limits that allow a particular pattern to match a given
subject string. This is done by calling pcre[16|32]_exec() repeatedly
with different limits.
Obtaining an estimate of stack usage
The actual amount of stack used per recursion can vary quite a lot,
depending on the compiler that was used to build PCRE and the optimiza-
tion or debugging options that were set for it. The rule of thumb value
of 500 bytes mentioned above may be larger or smaller than what is
actually needed. A better approximation can be obtained by running this
command:
pcretest -m -C
The -C option causes pcretest to output information about the options
with which PCRE was compiled. When -m is also given (before -C), infor-
mation about stack use is given in a line like this:
Match recursion uses stack: approximate frame size = 640 bytes
The value is approximate because some recursions need a bit more (up to
perhaps 16 more bytes).
If the above command is given when PCRE is compiled to use the heap
instead of the stack for recursion, the value that is output is the
size of each block that is obtained from the heap.
Changing stack size in Unix-like systems
In Unix-like environments, there is not often a problem with the stack
unless very long strings are involved, though the default limit on
stack size varies from system to system. Values from 8Mb to 64Mb are
common. You can find your default limit by running the command:
ulimit -s
Unfortunately, the effect of running out of stack is often SIGSEGV,
though sometimes a more explicit error message is given. You can nor-
mally increase the limit on stack size by code such as this:
struct rlimit rlim;
getrlimit(RLIMIT_STACK, &rlim);
rlim.rlim_cur = 100*1024*1024;
setrlimit(RLIMIT_STACK, &rlim);
This reads the current limits (soft and hard) using getrlimit(), then
attempts to increase the soft limit to 100Mb using setrlimit(). You
must do this before calling pcre[16|32]_exec().
Changing stack size in Mac OS X
Using setrlimit(), as described above, should also work on Mac OS X. It
is also possible to set a stack size when linking a program. There is a
discussion about stack sizes in Mac OS X at this web site:
http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2005/qa1419.html.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 24 June 2012
Copyright (c) 1997-2012 University of Cambridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------