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-.TH PCREAPI 3 "18 December 2015" "PCRE 8.39"
-.SH NAME
-PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
-.sp
-.B #include <pcre.h>
-.
-.
-.SH "PCRE NATIVE API BASIC FUNCTIONS"
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-.B pcre *pcre_compile(const char *\fIpattern\fP, int \fIoptions\fP,
-.B " const char **\fIerrptr\fP, int *\fIerroffset\fP,"
-.B " const unsigned char *\fItableptr\fP);"
-.sp
-.B pcre *pcre_compile2(const char *\fIpattern\fP, int \fIoptions\fP,
-.B " int *\fIerrorcodeptr\fP,"
-.B " const char **\fIerrptr\fP, int *\fIerroffset\fP,"
-.B " const unsigned char *\fItableptr\fP);"
-.sp
-.B pcre_extra *pcre_study(const pcre *\fIcode\fP, int \fIoptions\fP,
-.B " const char **\fIerrptr\fP);"
-.sp
-.B void pcre_free_study(pcre_extra *\fIextra\fP);
-.sp
-.B int pcre_exec(const pcre *\fIcode\fP, "const pcre_extra *\fIextra\fP,"
-.B " const char *\fIsubject\fP, int \fIlength\fP, int \fIstartoffset\fP,"
-.B " int \fIoptions\fP, int *\fIovector\fP, int \fIovecsize\fP);"
-.sp
-.B int pcre_dfa_exec(const pcre *\fIcode\fP, "const pcre_extra *\fIextra\fP,"
-.B " const char *\fIsubject\fP, int \fIlength\fP, int \fIstartoffset\fP,"
-.B " int \fIoptions\fP, int *\fIovector\fP, int \fIovecsize\fP,"
-.B " int *\fIworkspace\fP, int \fIwscount\fP);"
-.fi
-.
-.
-.SH "PCRE NATIVE API STRING EXTRACTION FUNCTIONS"
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-.B int pcre_copy_named_substring(const pcre *\fIcode\fP,
-.B " const char *\fIsubject\fP, int *\fIovector\fP,"
-.B " int \fIstringcount\fP, const char *\fIstringname\fP,"
-.B " char *\fIbuffer\fP, int \fIbuffersize\fP);"
-.sp
-.B int pcre_copy_substring(const char *\fIsubject\fP, int *\fIovector\fP,
-.B " int \fIstringcount\fP, int \fIstringnumber\fP, char *\fIbuffer\fP,"
-.B " int \fIbuffersize\fP);"
-.sp
-.B int pcre_get_named_substring(const pcre *\fIcode\fP,
-.B " const char *\fIsubject\fP, int *\fIovector\fP,"
-.B " int \fIstringcount\fP, const char *\fIstringname\fP,"
-.B " const char **\fIstringptr\fP);"
-.sp
-.B int pcre_get_stringnumber(const pcre *\fIcode\fP,
-.B " const char *\fIname\fP);"
-.sp
-.B int pcre_get_stringtable_entries(const pcre *\fIcode\fP,
-.B " const char *\fIname\fP, char **\fIfirst\fP, char **\fIlast\fP);"
-.sp
-.B int pcre_get_substring(const char *\fIsubject\fP, int *\fIovector\fP,
-.B " int \fIstringcount\fP, int \fIstringnumber\fP,"
-.B " const char **\fIstringptr\fP);"
-.sp
-.B int pcre_get_substring_list(const char *\fIsubject\fP,
-.B " int *\fIovector\fP, int \fIstringcount\fP, const char ***\fIlistptr\fP);"
-.sp
-.B void pcre_free_substring(const char *\fIstringptr\fP);
-.sp
-.B void pcre_free_substring_list(const char **\fIstringptr\fP);
-.fi
-.
-.
-.SH "PCRE NATIVE API AUXILIARY FUNCTIONS"
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-.B int pcre_jit_exec(const pcre *\fIcode\fP, "const pcre_extra *\fIextra\fP,"
-.B " const char *\fIsubject\fP, int \fIlength\fP, int \fIstartoffset\fP,"
-.B " int \fIoptions\fP, int *\fIovector\fP, int \fIovecsize\fP,"
-.B " pcre_jit_stack *\fIjstack\fP);"
-.sp
-.B pcre_jit_stack *pcre_jit_stack_alloc(int \fIstartsize\fP, int \fImaxsize\fP);
-.sp
-.B void pcre_jit_stack_free(pcre_jit_stack *\fIstack\fP);
-.sp
-.B void pcre_assign_jit_stack(pcre_extra *\fIextra\fP,
-.B " pcre_jit_callback \fIcallback\fP, void *\fIdata\fP);"
-.sp
-.B const unsigned char *pcre_maketables(void);
-.sp
-.B int pcre_fullinfo(const pcre *\fIcode\fP, "const pcre_extra *\fIextra\fP,"
-.B " int \fIwhat\fP, void *\fIwhere\fP);"
-.sp
-.B int pcre_refcount(pcre *\fIcode\fP, int \fIadjust\fP);
-.sp
-.B int pcre_config(int \fIwhat\fP, void *\fIwhere\fP);
-.sp
-.B const char *pcre_version(void);
-.sp
-.B int pcre_pattern_to_host_byte_order(pcre *\fIcode\fP,
-.B " pcre_extra *\fIextra\fP, const unsigned char *\fItables\fP);"
-.fi
-.
-.
-.SH "PCRE NATIVE API INDIRECTED FUNCTIONS"
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-.B void *(*pcre_malloc)(size_t);
-.sp
-.B void (*pcre_free)(void *);
-.sp
-.B void *(*pcre_stack_malloc)(size_t);
-.sp
-.B void (*pcre_stack_free)(void *);
-.sp
-.B int (*pcre_callout)(pcre_callout_block *);
-.sp
-.B int (*pcre_stack_guard)(void);
-.fi
-.
-.
-.SH "PCRE 8-BIT, 16-BIT, AND 32-BIT LIBRARIES"
-.rs
-.sp
-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.
-.P
-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 \fBpcre16_\fP or \fBpcre32_\fP instead of
-\fBpcre_\fP. 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 values.
-.P
-References to bytes and UTF-8 in this document should be read as references 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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcre16\fP
-.\"
-and
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcre32\fP
-.\"
-pages.
-.
-.
-.SH "PCRE API OVERVIEW"
-.rs
-.sp
-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 correspond to the
-POSIX regular expression API, but they do not give access to all the
-functionality. They are described in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcreposix\fP
-.\"
-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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrecpp\fP
-.\"
-page.
-.P
-The native API C function prototypes are defined in the header file
-\fBpcre.h\fP, and on Unix-like systems the (8-bit) library itself is called
-\fBlibpcre\fP. It can normally be accessed by adding \fB-lpcre\fP 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.
-.P
-In a Windows environment, if you want to statically link an application program
-against a non-dll \fBpcre.a\fP file, you must define PCRE_STATIC before
-including \fBpcre.h\fP or \fBpcrecpp.h\fP, because otherwise the
-\fBpcre_malloc()\fP and \fBpcre_free()\fP exported functions will be declared
-\fB__declspec(dllimport)\fP, with unwanted results.
-.P
-The functions \fBpcre_compile()\fP, \fBpcre_compile2()\fP, \fBpcre_study()\fP,
-and \fBpcre_exec()\fP are used for compiling and matching regular expressions
-in a Perl-compatible manner. A sample program that demonstrates the simplest
-way of using them is provided in the file called \fIpcredemo.c\fP in the PCRE
-source distribution. A listing of this program is given in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcredemo\fP
-.\"
-documentation, and the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcresample\fP
-.\"
-documentation describes how to compile and run it.
-.P
-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
-\fBpcre_jit_stack_alloc()\fP, \fBpcre_jit_stack_free()\fP, and
-\fBpcre_assign_jit_stack()\fP in order to control the JIT code's memory usage.
-.P
-From release 8.32 there is also a direct interface for JIT execution, which
-gives improved performance. The JIT-specific functions are discussed in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrejit\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.P
-A second matching function, \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP, which is not
-Perl-compatible, is also provided. This uses a different algorithm for the
-matching. 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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrematching\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.P
-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 \fBpcre_exec()\fP. They are:
-.sp
- \fBpcre_copy_substring()\fP
- \fBpcre_copy_named_substring()\fP
- \fBpcre_get_substring()\fP
- \fBpcre_get_named_substring()\fP
- \fBpcre_get_substring_list()\fP
- \fBpcre_get_stringnumber()\fP
- \fBpcre_get_stringtable_entries()\fP
-.sp
-\fBpcre_free_substring()\fP and \fBpcre_free_substring_list()\fP are also
-provided, to free the memory used for extracted strings.
-.P
-The function \fBpcre_maketables()\fP is used to build a set of character tables
-in the current locale for passing to \fBpcre_compile()\fP, \fBpcre_exec()\fP,
-or \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP. 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.
-.P
-The function \fBpcre_fullinfo()\fP is used to find out information about a
-compiled pattern. The function \fBpcre_version()\fP returns a pointer to a
-string containing the version of PCRE and its date of release.
-.P
-The function \fBpcre_refcount()\fP maintains a reference count in a data block
-containing a compiled pattern. This is provided for the benefit of
-object-oriented applications.
-.P
-The global variables \fBpcre_malloc\fP and \fBpcre_free\fP initially contain
-the entry points of the standard \fBmalloc()\fP and \fBfree()\fP functions,
-respectively. 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.
-.P
-The global variables \fBpcre_stack_malloc\fP and \fBpcre_stack_free\fP 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 \fBpcre_exec()\fP function. See the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrebuild\fP
-.\"
-documentation for details of how to do this. It is a non-standard way of
-building PCRE, for use in environments 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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrestack\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.P
-The global variable \fBpcre_callout\fP 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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrecallout\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.P
-The global variable \fBpcre_stack_guard\fP 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 function should return zero if all is well, or
-non-zero to force an error.
-.
-.
-.\" HTML <a name="newlines"></a>
-.SH NEWLINES
-.rs
-.sp
-PCRE supports five different conventions for indicating line breaks in
-strings: a single CR (carriage return) character, a single LF (linefeed)
-character, the two-character sequence CRLF, any of the three preceding, 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).
-.P
-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 standard. When PCRE is run, the
-default can be overridden, either when a pattern is compiled, or when it is
-matched.
-.P
-At compile time, the newline convention can be specified by the \fIoptions\fP
-argument of \fBpcre_compile()\fP, or it can be specified by special text at the
-start of the pattern itself; this overrides any other settings. See the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepattern\fP
-.\"
-page for details of the special character sequences.
-.P
-In the PCRE documentation the word "newline" is used to mean "the character 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 advancement for a
-non-anchored pattern. There is more detail about this in the
-.\" HTML <a href="#execoptions">
-.\" </a>
-section on \fBpcre_exec()\fP options
-.\"
-below.
-.P
-The choice of newline convention does not affect the interpretation of
-the \en or \er escape sequences, nor does it affect what \eR matches, which is
-controlled in a similar way, but by separate options.
-.
-.
-.SH MULTITHREADING
-.rs
-.sp
-The PCRE functions can be used in multi-threading applications, with the
-proviso that the memory management functions pointed to by \fBpcre_malloc\fP,
-\fBpcre_free\fP, \fBpcre_stack_malloc\fP, and \fBpcre_stack_free\fP, and the
-callout and stack-checking functions pointed to by \fBpcre_callout\fP and
-\fBpcre_stack_guard\fP, are shared by all threads.
-.P
-The compiled form of a regular expression is not altered during matching, so
-the same compiled pattern can safely be used by several threads at once.
-.P
-If the just-in-time optimization feature is being used, it needs separate
-memory stack areas for each thread. See the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrejit\fP
-.\"
-documentation for more details.
-.
-.
-.SH "SAVING PRECOMPILED PATTERNS FOR LATER USE"
-.rs
-.sp
-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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcreprecompile\fP
-.\"
-documentation, which includes a description of the
-\fBpcre_pattern_to_host_byte_order()\fP function. However, compiling a regular
-expression with one version of PCRE for use with a different version is not
-guaranteed to work and may cause crashes.
-.
-.
-.SH "CHECKING BUILD-TIME OPTIONS"
-.rs
-.sp
-.B int pcre_config(int \fIwhat\fP, void *\fIwhere\fP);
-.PP
-The function \fBpcre_config()\fP makes it possible for a PCRE client to
-discover which optional features have been compiled into the PCRE library. The
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrebuild\fP
-.\"
-documentation has more details about these optional features.
-.P
-The first argument for \fBpcre_config()\fP 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:
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_UTF8
-.sp
-The output is an integer that is set to one if UTF-8 support is available;
-otherwise it is set to zero. This value should normally be given to the 8-bit
-version of this function, \fBpcre_config()\fP. If it is given to the 16-bit
-or 32-bit version of this function, the result is PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_UTF16
-.sp
-The output is an integer that is set to one if UTF-16 support is available;
-otherwise it is set to zero. This value should normally be given to the 16-bit
-version of this function, \fBpcre16_config()\fP. If it is given to the 8-bit
-or 32-bit version of this function, the result is PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_UTF32
-.sp
-The output is an integer that is set to one if UTF-32 support is available;
-otherwise it is set to zero. This value should normally be given to the 32-bit
-version of this function, \fBpcre32_config()\fP. If it is given to the 8-bit
-or 16-bit version of this function, the result is PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_UNICODE_PROPERTIES
-.sp
-The output is an integer that is set to one if support for Unicode character
-properties is available; otherwise it is set to zero.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_JIT
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_JITTARGET
-.sp
-The output is a pointer to a zero-terminated "const char *" string. If JIT
-support is available, the string contains the name of the architecture for
-which the JIT compiler is configured, for example "x86 32bit (little endian +
-unaligned)". If JIT support is not available, the result is NULL.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_NEWLINE
-.sp
-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 correspond to the standard sequence for your operating
-system.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_BSR
-.sp
-The output is an integer whose value indicates what character sequences the \eR
-escape sequence matches by default. A value of 0 means that \eR matches any
-Unicode line ending sequence; a value of 1 means that \eR matches only CR, LF,
-or CRLF. The default can be overridden when a pattern is compiled or matched.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_LINK_SIZE
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_POSIX_MALLOC_THRESHOLD
-.sp
-The output is an integer that contains the threshold above which the POSIX
-interface uses \fBmalloc()\fP for output vectors. Further details are given in
-the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcreposix\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_PARENS_LIMIT
-.sp
-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 specified 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 application. For finer control over
-compilation stack usage, you can set a pointer to an external checking function
-in \fBpcre_stack_guard\fP.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_MATCH_LIMIT
-.sp
-The output is a long integer that gives the default limit for the number of
-internal matching function calls in a \fBpcre_exec()\fP execution. Further
-details are given with \fBpcre_exec()\fP below.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION
-.sp
-The output is a long integer that gives the default limit for the depth of
-recursion when calling the internal matching function in a \fBpcre_exec()\fP
-execution. Further details are given with \fBpcre_exec()\fP below.
-.sp
- PCRE_CONFIG_STACKRECURSE
-.sp
-The output is an integer that is set to one if internal recursion when running
-\fBpcre_exec()\fP 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, \fBpcre_stack_malloc\fP and
-\fBpcre_stack_free\fP are called to manage memory blocks on the heap, thus
-avoiding the use of the stack.
-.
-.
-.SH "COMPILING A PATTERN"
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-.B pcre *pcre_compile(const char *\fIpattern\fP, int \fIoptions\fP,
-.B " const char **\fIerrptr\fP, int *\fIerroffset\fP,"
-.B " const unsigned char *\fItableptr\fP);"
-.sp
-.B pcre *pcre_compile2(const char *\fIpattern\fP, int \fIoptions\fP,
-.B " int *\fIerrorcodeptr\fP,"
-.B " const char **\fIerrptr\fP, int *\fIerroffset\fP,"
-.B " const unsigned char *\fItableptr\fP);"
-.fi
-.P
-Either of the functions \fBpcre_compile()\fP or \fBpcre_compile2()\fP can be
-called to compile a pattern into an internal form. The only difference between
-the two interfaces is that \fBpcre_compile2()\fP has an additional argument,
-\fIerrorcodeptr\fP, via which a numerical error code can be returned. To avoid
-too much repetition, we refer just to \fBpcre_compile()\fP below, but the
-information applies equally to \fBpcre_compile2()\fP.
-.P
-The pattern is a C string terminated by a binary zero, and is passed in the
-\fIpattern\fP argument. A pointer to a single block of memory that is obtained
-via \fBpcre_malloc\fP is returned. This contains the compiled code and related
-data. The \fBpcre\fP 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 \fBpcre_free\fP) when it is no longer required.
-.P
-Although the compiled code of a PCRE regex is relocatable, that is, it does not
-depend on memory location, the complete \fBpcre\fP data block is not
-fully relocatable, because it may contain a copy of the \fItableptr\fP
-argument, which is an address (see below).
-.P
-The \fIoptions\fP argument contains various bit settings that affect the
-compilation. 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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepattern\fP
-.\"
-documentation). For those options that can be different in different parts of
-the pattern, the contents of the \fIoptions\fP argument specifies their
-settings at the start of compilation and execution. The PCRE_ANCHORED,
-PCRE_BSR_\fIxxx\fP, PCRE_NEWLINE_\fIxxx\fP, PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK, and
-PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE options can be set at the time of matching as well as at
-compile time.
-.P
-If \fIerrptr\fP is NULL, \fBpcre_compile()\fP returns NULL immediately.
-Otherwise, if compilation of a pattern fails, \fBpcre_compile()\fP returns
-NULL, and sets the variable pointed to by \fIerrptr\fP 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. 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 \fIerroffset\fP, 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.
-.P
-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 character.
-.P
-If \fBpcre_compile2()\fP is used instead of \fBpcre_compile()\fP, and the
-\fIerrorcodeptr\fP 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.
-.P
-If the final argument, \fItableptr\fP, is NULL, PCRE uses a default set of
-character tables that are built when PCRE is compiled, using the default C
-locale. Otherwise, \fItableptr\fP must be an address that is the result of a
-call to \fBpcre_maketables()\fP. This value is stored with the compiled
-pattern, and used again by \fBpcre_exec()\fP and \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP when the
-pattern is matched. For more discussion, see the section on locale support
-below.
-.P
-This code fragment shows a typical straightforward call to \fBpcre_compile()\fP:
-.sp
- 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 */
-.sp
-The following names for option bits are defined in the \fBpcre.h\fP header
-file:
-.sp
- PCRE_ANCHORED
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT
-.sp
-If this bit is set, \fBpcre_compile()\fP automatically inserts callout items,
-all with number 255, before each pattern item. For discussion of the callout
-facility, see the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrecallout\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.sp
- PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF
- PCRE_BSR_UNICODE
-.sp
-These options (which are mutually exclusive) control what the \eR 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 setting an option
-when a compiled pattern is matched.
-.sp
- PCRE_CASELESS
-.sp
-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 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-8 support.
-.sp
- PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_DOTALL
-.sp
-If this bit is set, a dot metacharacter in the pattern matches a character 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 setting of this option.
-.sp
- PCRE_DUPNAMES
-.sp
-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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepattern\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.sp
- PCRE_EXTENDED
-.sp
-If this bit is set, most white space characters in the pattern are totally
-ignored except when escaped or inside a character class. However, 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.
-.P
-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.
-.P
-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.
-.P
-Which characters are interpreted as newlines is controlled by the options
-passed to \fBpcre_compile()\fP or by a special sequence at the start of the
-pattern, as described in the section entitled
-.\" HTML <a href="pcrepattern.html#newlines">
-.\" </a>
-"Newline conventions"
-.\"
-in the \fBpcrepattern\fP 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.
-.P
-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 introduces a conditional subpattern.
-.sp
- PCRE_EXTRA
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_FIRSTLINE
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT
-.sp
-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:
-.P
-(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.
-.P
-(2) At run time, a back reference to an unset subpattern group matches an empty
-string (by default this causes the current matching alternative to fail). A
-pattern such as (\e1)(a) succeeds when this option is set (assuming it can find
-an "a" in the subject), whereas it fails by default, for Perl compatibility.
-.P
-(3) \eU matches an upper case "U" character; by default \eU causes a compile
-time error (Perl uses \eU to upper case subsequent characters).
-.P
-(4) \eu 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, \eu causes a compile time error (Perl uses it to upper
-case the following character).
-.P
-(5) \ex 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
-\ex, but it may have zero, one, or two digits (so, for example, \exz matches a
-binary zero character followed by z).
-.sp
- PCRE_MULTILINE
-.sp
-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.
-.P
-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 newlines in a subject string, or no
-occurrences of ^ or $ in a pattern, setting PCRE_MULTILINE has no effect.
-.sp
- PCRE_NEVER_UTF
-.sp
-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 prevents 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.
-.sp
- PCRE_NEWLINE_CR
- PCRE_NEWLINE_LF
- PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF
- PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF
- PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY
-.sp
-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.
-.P
-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 separator, U+2028), and PS
-(paragraph separator, U+2029). For the 8-bit library, the last two are
-recognized only in UTF-8 mode.
-.P
-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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrebuild\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.P
-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 sensible. 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.
-.P
-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 # outside 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.
-.P
-The newline option that is set at compile time becomes the default that is used
-for \fBpcre_exec()\fP and \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP, but it can be overridden.
-.sp
- PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE
-.sp
-If this option is set, it disables the use of numbered capturing parentheses 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.
-.sp
- PCRE_NO_AUTO_POSSESS
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE
-.sp
-This is an option that acts at matching time; that is, it is really an option
-for \fBpcre_exec()\fP or \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP. If it is set at compile time,
-it is remembered with the compiled pattern and assumed at matching 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
-.\" HTML <a href="#execoptions">
-.\" </a>
-below.
-.\"
-.sp
- PCRE_UCP
-.sp
-This option changes the way PCRE processes \eB, \eb, \eD, \ed, \eS, \es, \eW,
-\ew, 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
-.\" HTML <a href="pcre.html#genericchartypes">
-.\" </a>
-generic character types
-.\"
-in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepattern\fP
-.\"
-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
-property support.
-.sp
- PCRE_UNGREEDY
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_UTF8
-.sp
-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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcreunicode\fP
-.\"
-page.
-.sp
- PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK
-.sp
-When PCRE_UTF8 is set, the validity of the pattern as a UTF-8 string is
-automatically checked. There is a discussion about the
-.\" HTML <a href="pcreunicode.html#utf8strings">
-.\" </a>
-validity of UTF-8 strings
-.\"
-in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcreunicode\fP
-.\"
-page. If an invalid UTF-8 sequence is found, \fBpcre_compile()\fP returns an
-error. If you already know that your pattern is valid, and you want to skip
-this check for performance reasons, 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 \fBpcre_exec()\fP and \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP, 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.
-.
-.
-.SH "COMPILATION ERROR CODES"
-.rs
-.sp
-The following table lists the error codes than may be returned by
-\fBpcre_compile2()\fP, 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.
-.sp
- 0 no error
- 1 \e at end of pattern
- 2 \ec at end of pattern
- 3 unrecognized character follows \e
- 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 \ex{} or \eo{} is too large
- 35 invalid condition (?(0)
- 36 \eC not allowed in lookbehind assertion
- 37 PCRE does not support \eL, \el, \eN{name}, \eU, or \eu
- 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 \eP, \ep, and \eX has not been compiled
- 46 malformed \eP or \ep sequence
- 47 unknown property name after \eP or \ep
- 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 \e377 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 \eg 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 \ec must be followed by an ASCII character
- 69 \ek is not followed by a braced, angle-bracketed, or quoted name
- 70 internal error: unknown opcode in find_fixedlength()
- 71 \eN 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 \eu.... 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 \ex{} (closing brace missing?)
- 80 non-octal character in \eo{} (closing brace missing?)
- 81 missing opening brace after \eo
- 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)
-.sp
-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.
-.
-.
-.\" HTML <a name="studyingapattern"></a>
-.SH "STUDYING A PATTERN"
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-.B pcre_extra *pcre_study(const pcre *\fIcode\fP, int \fIoptions\fP,
-.B " const char **\fIerrptr\fP);"
-.fi
-.PP
-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 \fBpcre_study()\fP takes a pointer to a compiled pattern as its first
-argument. If studying the pattern produces additional information that will
-help speed up matching, \fBpcre_study()\fP returns a pointer to a
-\fBpcre_extra\fP block, in which the \fIstudy_data\fP field points to the
-results of the study.
-.P
-The returned value from \fBpcre_study()\fP can be passed directly to
-\fBpcre_exec()\fP or \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP. However, a \fBpcre_extra\fP block
-also contains other fields that can be set by the caller before the block is
-passed; these are described
-.\" HTML <a href="#extradata">
-.\" </a>
-below
-.\"
-in the section on matching a pattern.
-.P
-If studying the pattern does not produce any useful information,
-\fBpcre_study()\fP returns NULL by default. In that circumstance, if the
-calling program wants to pass any of the other fields to \fBpcre_exec()\fP or
-\fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP, it must set up its own \fBpcre_extra\fP block. However,
-if \fBpcre_study()\fP is called with the PCRE_STUDY_EXTRA_NEEDED option, it
-returns a \fBpcre_extra\fP block even if studying did not find any additional
-information. It may still return NULL, however, if an error occurs in
-\fBpcre_study()\fP.
-.P
-The second argument of \fBpcre_study()\fP contains option bits. There are three
-further options in addition to PCRE_STUDY_EXTRA_NEEDED:
-.sp
- PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE
- PCRE_STUDY_JIT_PARTIAL_HARD_COMPILE
- PCRE_STUDY_JIT_PARTIAL_SOFT_COMPILE
-.sp
-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 \fBpcre_exec()\fP interpretive matching function. If the just-in-time
-compiler is not available, these options are ignored. All undefined bits in the
-\fIoptions\fP argument must be zero.
-.P
-JIT compilation is a heavyweight optimization. It can take some time for
-patterns to be analyzed, and for one-off matches and simple patterns 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 \fBpcre_exec()\fP
-interpreter. For more details, see the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrejit\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.P
-The third argument for \fBpcre_study()\fP 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 \fBpcre_study()\fP, to be
-sure that it has run successfully.
-.P
-When you are finished with a pattern, you can free the memory used for the
-study data by calling \fBpcre_free_study()\fP. This function was added to the
-API for release 8.20. For earlier versions, the memory could be freed with
-\fBpcre_free()\fP, 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.
-.P
-This is a typical way in which \fBpcre_study\fP() is used (except that in a
-real application there should be tests for errors):
-.sp
- 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);
-.sp
-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 \fBpcre_fullinfo()\fP function.
-.P
-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.)
-.P
-These two optimizations apply to both \fBpcre_exec()\fP and
-\fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP, and the information is also used by the JIT compiler.
-The optimizations 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.
-.P
-PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE can be specified at either compile time or execution
-time. However, if PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE is passed to \fBpcre_exec()\fP, (that
-is, after any JIT compilation has happened) JIT execution is disabled. For JIT
-execution to work with PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE, the option must be set at
-compile time.
-.P
-There is a longer discussion of PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE
-.\" HTML <a href="#execoptions">
-.\" </a>
-below.
-.\"
-.
-.
-.\" HTML <a name="localesupport"></a>
-.SH "LOCALE SUPPORT"
-.rs
-.sp
-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 \ew or \ed. However, if
-PCRE is built with Unicode property support, all characters can be tested with
-\ep and \eP, or, alternatively, the PCRE_UCP option can be set when a pattern
-is compiled; this causes \ew and friends to use Unicode property support
-instead of the built-in tables.
-.P
-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.
-.P
-PCRE contains an internal set of tables that are used when the final argument
-of \fBpcre_compile()\fP is NULL. These are sufficient for many applications.
-Normally, the internal tables recognize only ASCII characters. However, when
-PCRE is built, it is possible to cause the internal tables to be rebuilt in the
-default "C" locale of the local system, which may cause them to be different.
-.P
-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 Unicode, the need
-for this locale support is expected to die away.
-.P
-External tables are built by calling the \fBpcre_maketables()\fP function,
-which has no arguments, in the relevant locale. The result can then be passed
-to \fBpcre_compile()\fP 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 letters), the following code could
-be used:
-.sp
- setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "fr_FR");
- tables = pcre_maketables();
- re = pcre_compile(..., tables);
-.sp
-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".
-.P
-When \fBpcre_maketables()\fP runs, the tables are built in memory that is
-obtained via \fBpcre_malloc\fP. It is the caller's responsibility to ensure
-that the memory containing the tables remains available for as long as it is
-needed.
-.P
-The pointer that is passed to \fBpcre_compile()\fP is saved with the compiled
-pattern, and the same tables are used via this pointer by \fBpcre_study()\fP
-and also by \fBpcre_exec()\fP and \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP. Thus, for any single
-pattern, compilation, studying and matching all happen in the same locale, but
-different patterns can be processed in different locales.
-.P
-It is possible to pass a table pointer or NULL (indicating the use of the
-internal tables) to \fBpcre_exec()\fP or \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP (see the
-discussion below in the section on matching a pattern). This facility is
-provided 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 compiled is likely to lead to anomalous
-(usually incorrect) results.
-.
-.
-.\" HTML <a name="infoaboutpattern"></a>
-.SH "INFORMATION ABOUT A PATTERN"
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-.B int pcre_fullinfo(const pcre *\fIcode\fP, "const pcre_extra *\fIextra\fP,"
-.B " int \fIwhat\fP, void *\fIwhere\fP);"
-.fi
-.PP
-The \fBpcre_fullinfo()\fP function returns information about a compiled
-pattern. It replaces the \fBpcre_info()\fP function, which was removed from the
-library at version 8.30, after more than 10 years of obsolescence.
-.P
-The first argument for \fBpcre_fullinfo()\fP is a pointer to the compiled
-pattern. The second argument is the result of \fBpcre_study()\fP, 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:
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_NULL the argument \fIcode\fP was NULL
- the argument \fIwhere\fP 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 \fIwhat\fP was invalid
- PCRE_ERROR_UNSET the requested field is not set
-.sp
-The "magic number" is placed at the start of each compiled pattern as an simple
-check against passing an arbitrary memory pointer. The endianness error can
-occur if a compiled pattern is saved and reloaded on a different host. Here is
-a typical call of \fBpcre_fullinfo()\fP, to obtain the length of the compiled
-pattern:
-.sp
- 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 */
-.sp
-The possible values for the third argument are defined in \fBpcre.h\fP, and are
-as follows:
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_BACKREFMAX
-.sp
-Return the number of the highest back reference in the pattern. The fourth
-argument should point to an \fBint\fP variable. Zero is returned if there are
-no back references.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_CAPTURECOUNT
-.sp
-Return the number of capturing subpatterns in the pattern. The fourth argument
-should point to an \fBint\fP variable.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_DEFAULT_TABLES
-.sp
-Return a pointer to the internal default character tables within PCRE. The
-fourth argument should point to an \fBunsigned char *\fP variable. This
-information call is provided for internal use by the \fBpcre_study()\fP
-function. External callers can cause PCRE to use its internal tables by passing
-a NULL table pointer.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_FIRSTBYTE (deprecated)
-.sp
-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 \fBint\fP
-variable. Negative values are used for special cases. However, 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 reason, this value is deprecated; use
-PCRE_INFO_FIRSTCHARACTERFLAGS and PCRE_INFO_FIRSTCHARACTER instead.
-.P
-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.
-.P
-If there is no fixed first value, and if either
-.sp
-(a) the pattern was compiled with the PCRE_MULTILINE option, and every branch
-starts with "^", or
-.sp
-(b) every branch of the pattern starts with ".*" and PCRE_DOTALL is not set
-(if it were set, the pattern would be anchored),
-.sp
--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.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_FIRSTCHARACTER
-.sp
-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 \fBuint_t\fP
-variable.
-.P
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_FIRSTCHARACTERFLAGS
-.sp
-Return information about the first data unit of any matched string, for a
-non-anchored pattern. The fourth argument should point to an \fBint\fP
-variable.
-.P
-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
-.sp
-(a) the pattern was compiled with the PCRE_MULTILINE option, and every branch
-starts with "^", or
-.sp
-(b) every branch of the pattern starts with ".*" and PCRE_DOTALL is not set
-(if it were set, the pattern would be anchored),
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_FIRSTTABLE
-.sp
-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 \fBunsigned char *\fP variable.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_HASCRORLF
-.sp
-Return 1 if the pattern contains any explicit matches for CR or LF characters,
-otherwise 0. The fourth argument should point to an \fBint\fP variable. An
-explicit match is either a literal CR or LF character, or \er or \en.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_JCHANGED
-.sp
-Return 1 if the (?J) or (?-J) option setting is used in the pattern, otherwise
-0. The fourth argument should point to an \fBint\fP variable. (?J) and
-(?-J) set and unset the local PCRE_DUPNAMES option, respectively.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_JIT
-.sp
-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
-\fBint\fP 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 particular pattern. See the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrejit\fP
-.\"
-documentation for details of what can and cannot be handled.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_JITSIZE
-.sp
-If the pattern was successfully studied with a JIT option, return the size of
-the JIT compiled code, otherwise return zero. The fourth argument should point
-to a \fBsize_t\fP variable.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_LASTLITERAL
-.sp
-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 \fBint\fP 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\ed+z\ed+/ the returned value is "z", but for /^a\edz\ed/ the returned value
-is -1.
-.P
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_MATCH_EMPTY
-.sp
-Return 1 if the pattern can match an empty string, otherwise 0. The fourth
-argument should point to an \fBint\fP variable.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_MATCHLIMIT
-.sp
-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 \fBpcre_fullinfo()\fP returns the error PCRE_ERROR_UNSET.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_MAXLOOKBEHIND
-.sp
-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
-\eb and \eB require a one-character lookbehind. \eA 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, \eA might match incorrectly at the start of a new
-segment.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_MINLENGTH
-.sp
-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 \fBint\fP
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_NAMECOUNT
- PCRE_INFO_NAMEENTRYSIZE
- PCRE_INFO_NAMETABLE
-.sp
-PCRE supports the use of named as well as numbered capturing parentheses. The
-names are just an additional way of identifying the parentheses, which still
-acquire numbers. Several convenience functions such as
-\fBpcre_get_named_substring()\fP are provided for extracting captured
-substrings 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 \fBpcre_exec()\fP below). To do the conversion,
-you need to use the name-to-number map, which is described by these three
-values.
-.P
-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 \fBint\fP 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 \fBchar\fP in the 8-bit library, where
-the first two bytes of each entry are the number 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.
-.P
-The names are in alphabetical order. If (?| is used to create multiple groups
-with the same number, as described in the
-.\" HTML <a href="pcrepattern.html#dupsubpatternnumber">
-.\" </a>
-section on duplicate subpattern numbers
-.\"
-in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepattern\fP
-.\"
-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_DUPNAMES 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.
-.P
-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):
-.sp
-.\" JOIN
- (?<date> (?<year>(\ed\ed)?\ed\ed) -
- (?<month>\ed\ed) - (?<day>\ed\ed) )
-.sp
-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 ??:
-.sp
- 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 ??
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_OKPARTIAL
-.sp
-Return 1 if the pattern can be used for partial matching with
-\fBpcre_exec()\fP, otherwise 0. The fourth argument should point to an
-\fBint\fP variable. From release 8.00, this always returns 1, because the
-restrictions that previously applied to partial matching have been lifted. The
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepartial\fP
-.\"
-documentation gives details of partial matching.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_OPTIONS
-.sp
-Return a copy of the options with which the pattern was compiled. The fourth
-argument should point to an \fBunsigned long int\fP variable. These option bits
-are those specified in the call to \fBpcre_compile()\fP, 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.
-.P
-A pattern is automatically anchored by PCRE if all of its top-level
-alternatives begin with one of the following:
-.sp
- ^ unless PCRE_MULTILINE is set
- \eA always
- \eG always
-.\" JOIN
- .* if PCRE_DOTALL is set and there are no back
- references to the subpattern in which .* appears
-.sp
-For such patterns, the PCRE_ANCHORED bit is set in the options returned by
-\fBpcre_fullinfo()\fP.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_RECURSIONLIMIT
-.sp
-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 \fBpcre_fullinfo()\fP returns the error PCRE_ERROR_UNSET.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_SIZE
-.sp
-Return the size of the compiled pattern in bytes (for all three libraries). The
-fourth argument should point to a \fBsize_t\fP variable. This value does not
-include the size of the \fBpcre\fP structure that is returned by
-\fBpcre_compile()\fP. The value that is passed as the argument to
-\fBpcre_malloc()\fP when \fBpcre_compile()\fP is getting memory in which to
-place the compiled data is the value returned by this option plus the size of
-the \fBpcre\fP structure. Studying a compiled pattern, with or without JIT,
-does not alter the value returned by this option.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_STUDYSIZE
-.sp
-Return the size in bytes (for all three libraries) of the data block pointed to
-by the \fIstudy_data\fP field in a \fBpcre_extra\fP block. If \fBpcre_extra\fP
-is NULL, or there is no study data, zero is returned. The fourth argument
-should point to a \fBsize_t\fP variable. The \fIstudy_data\fP field is set by
-\fBpcre_study()\fP to record information that will speed up matching (see the
-section entitled
-.\" HTML <a href="#studyingapattern">
-.\" </a>
-"Studying a pattern"
-.\"
-above). The format of the \fIstudy_data\fP block is private, but its length
-is made available via this option so that it can be saved and restored (see the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcreprecompile\fP
-.\"
-documentation for details).
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_REQUIREDCHARFLAGS
-.sp
-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 \fBint\fP variable. If there is no such value, 0 is returned. If returning
-1, the character value itself can be retrieved using PCRE_INFO_REQUIREDCHAR.
-.P
-For anchored patterns, a last literal value is recorded only if it follows
-something of variable length. For example, for the pattern /^a\ed+z\ed+/ the
-returned value 1 (with "z" returned from PCRE_INFO_REQUIREDCHAR), but for
-/^a\edz\ed/ the returned value is 0.
-.sp
- PCRE_INFO_REQUIREDCHAR
-.sp
-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 \fBuint32_t\fP variable. If there is no such
-value, 0 is returned.
-.
-.
-.SH "REFERENCE COUNTS"
-.rs
-.sp
-.B int pcre_refcount(pcre *\fIcode\fP, int \fIadjust\fP);
-.PP
-The \fBpcre_refcount()\fP 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.
-.P
-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
-\fIadjust\fP 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.
-.P
-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.)
-.
-.
-.SH "MATCHING A PATTERN: THE TRADITIONAL FUNCTION"
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-.B int pcre_exec(const pcre *\fIcode\fP, "const pcre_extra *\fIextra\fP,"
-.B " const char *\fIsubject\fP," int \fIlength\fP, int \fIstartoffset\fP,
-.B " int \fIoptions\fP, int *\fIovector\fP, int \fIovecsize\fP);"
-.fi
-.P
-The function \fBpcre_exec()\fP is called to match a subject string against a
-compiled pattern, which is passed in the \fIcode\fP argument. If the
-pattern was studied, the result of the study should be passed in the
-\fIextra\fP argument. You can call \fBpcre_exec()\fP with the same \fIcode\fP
-and \fIextra\fP arguments as many times as you like, in order to match
-different subject strings with the same pattern.
-.P
-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
-.\" HTML <a href="#dfamatch">
-.\" </a>
-below
-.\"
-in the section about the \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP function.
-.P
-In most applications, the pattern will have been compiled (and optionally
-studied) in the same process that calls \fBpcre_exec()\fP. 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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcreprecompile\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.P
-Here is an example of a simple call to \fBpcre_exec()\fP:
-.sp
- 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) */
-.
-.
-.\" HTML <a name="extradata"></a>
-.SS "Extra data for \fBpcre_exec()\fR"
-.rs
-.sp
-If the \fIextra\fP argument is not NULL, it must point to a \fBpcre_extra\fP
-data block. The \fBpcre_study()\fP function returns such a block (when it
-doesn't return NULL), but you can also create one for yourself, and pass
-additional information in it. The \fBpcre_extra\fP block contains the following
-fields (not necessarily in this order):
-.sp
- unsigned long int \fIflags\fP;
- void *\fIstudy_data\fP;
- void *\fIexecutable_jit\fP;
- unsigned long int \fImatch_limit\fP;
- unsigned long int \fImatch_limit_recursion\fP;
- void *\fIcallout_data\fP;
- const unsigned char *\fItables\fP;
- unsigned char **\fImark\fP;
-.sp
-In the 16-bit version of this structure, the \fImark\fP field has type
-"PCRE_UCHAR16 **".
-.sp
-In the 32-bit version of this structure, the \fImark\fP field has type
-"PCRE_UCHAR32 **".
-.P
-The \fIflags\fP field is used to specify which of the other fields are set. The
-flag bits are:
-.sp
- 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
-.sp
-Other flag bits should be set to zero. The \fIstudy_data\fP field and sometimes
-the \fIexecutable_jit\fP field are set in the \fBpcre_extra\fP block that is
-returned by \fBpcre_study()\fP, 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.
-.P
-The \fImatch_limit\fP 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 unlimited repeats.
-.P
-Internally, \fBpcre_exec()\fP uses a function called \fBmatch()\fP, which it
-calls repeatedly (sometimes recursively). The limit set by \fImatch_limit\fP 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.
-.P
-When \fBpcre_exec()\fP 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 \fImatch_limit\fP value is also used in this case
-(but in a different way) to limit how long the matching can continue.
-.P
-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 \fBpcre_exec()\fP with a \fBpcre_extra\fP
-block in which \fImatch_limit\fP is set, and PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT is set in
-the \fIflags\fP field. If the limit is exceeded, \fBpcre_exec()\fP returns
-PCRE_ERROR_MATCHLIMIT.
-.P
-A value for the match limit may also be supplied by an item at the start of a
-pattern of the form
-.sp
- (*LIMIT_MATCH=d)
-.sp
-where d is a decimal number. However, such a setting is ignored unless d is
-less than the limit set by the caller of \fBpcre_exec()\fP or, if no such limit
-is set, less than the default.
-.P
-The \fImatch_limit_recursion\fP field is similar to \fImatch_limit\fP, but
-instead of limiting the total number of times that \fBmatch()\fP 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 \fBmatch()\fP are recursive.
-This limit is of use only if it is set smaller than \fImatch_limit\fP.
-.P
-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.
-.P
-The default value for \fImatch_limit_recursion\fP can be set when PCRE is
-built; the default default is the same value as the default for
-\fImatch_limit\fP. You can override the default by suppling \fBpcre_exec()\fP
-with a \fBpcre_extra\fP block in which \fImatch_limit_recursion\fP is set, and
-PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION is set in the \fIflags\fP field. If the limit
-is exceeded, \fBpcre_exec()\fP returns PCRE_ERROR_RECURSIONLIMIT.
-.P
-A value for the recursion limit may also be supplied by an item at the start of
-a pattern of the form
-.sp
- (*LIMIT_RECURSION=d)
-.sp
-where d is a decimal number. However, such a setting is ignored unless d is
-less than the limit set by the caller of \fBpcre_exec()\fP or, if no such limit
-is set, less than the default.
-.P
-The \fIcallout_data\fP field is used in conjunction with the "callout" feature,
-and is described in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrecallout\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.P
-The \fItables\fP 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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcreprecompile\fP
-.\"
-documentation for a discussion of saving compiled patterns for later use. If
-NULL is passed using this mechanism, it forces PCRE's internal tables to be
-used.
-.P
-\fBWarning:\fP The tables that \fBpcre_exec()\fP uses must be the same as those
-that were used when the pattern was compiled. If this is not the case, the
-behaviour of \fBpcre_exec()\fP 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 automatically passed
-with the compiled pattern from \fBpcre_compile()\fP to \fBpcre_exec()\fP.
-.P
-If PCRE_EXTRA_MARK is set in the \fIflags\fP field, the \fImark\fP field must
-be set to point to a suitable variable. If the pattern contains any
-backtracking control verbs such as (*MARK:NAME), and the execution ends up with
-a name to pass back, a pointer to the name string (zero terminated) is placed
-in the variable pointed to by the \fImark\fP 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 \fImark\fP field is set to NULL. For details of the
-backtracking control verbs, see the section entitled
-.\" HTML <a href="pcrepattern#backtrackcontrol">
-.\" </a>
-"Backtracking control"
-.\"
-in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepattern\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.
-.
-.\" HTML <a name="execoptions"></a>
-.SS "Option bits for \fBpcre_exec()\fP"
-.rs
-.sp
-The unused bits of the \fIoptions\fP argument for \fBpcre_exec()\fP must be
-zero. The only bits that may be set are PCRE_ANCHORED, PCRE_NEWLINE_\fIxxx\fP,
-PCRE_NOTBOL, PCRE_NOTEOL, PCRE_NOTEMPTY, PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART,
-PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE, PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK, PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD, and
-PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT.
-.P
-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 \fBpcre_exec()\fP is run.
-.sp
- PCRE_ANCHORED
-.sp
-The PCRE_ANCHORED option limits \fBpcre_exec()\fP 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.
-.sp
- PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF
- PCRE_BSR_UNICODE
-.sp
-These options (which are mutually exclusive) control what the \eR 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.
-.sp
- PCRE_NEWLINE_CR
- PCRE_NEWLINE_LF
- PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF
- PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF
- PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY
-.sp
-These options override the newline definition that was chosen or defaulted when
-the pattern was compiled. For details, see the description of
-\fBpcre_compile()\fP above. During matching, the newline choice affects the
-behaviour of the dot, circumflex, and dollar metacharacters. It may also alter
-the way the match position is advanced after a match failure for an unanchored
-pattern.
-.P
-When PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF, PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF, or PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY is set, and a
-match attempt for an unanchored pattern fails when the current 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.
-.P
-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 "\er\enA" because, after failing at the
-start, it skips both the CR and the LF before retrying. However, the pattern
-[\er\en]A does match that string, because it contains an explicit CR or LF
-reference, and so advances only by one character after the first failure.
-.P
-An explicit match for CR of LF is either a literal appearance of one of those
-characters, or one of the \er or \en escape sequences. Implicit matches such as
-[^X] do not count, nor does \es (which includes CR and LF in the characters
-that it matches).
-.P
-Notwithstanding the above, anomalous effects may still occur when CRLF is a
-valid newline sequence and explicit \er or \en escapes appear in the pattern.
-.sp
- PCRE_NOTBOL
-.sp
-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 behaviour of the circumflex
-metacharacter. It does not affect \eA.
-.sp
- PCRE_NOTEOL
-.sp
-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 without PCRE_MULTILINE (at
-compile time) causes dollar never to match. This option affects only the
-behaviour of the dollar metacharacter. It does not affect \eZ or \ez.
-.sp
- PCRE_NOTEMPTY
-.sp
-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
-.sp
- a?b?
-.sp
-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 occurrences of "a" or "b".
-.sp
- PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART
-.sp
-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 \eK.
-.P
-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
-\fBsplit()\fP 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 offset with PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART and PCRE_ANCHORED, and then
-if that fails, by advancing the starting offset (see below) and trying an
-ordinary match again. There is some code that demonstrates how to do this in
-the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcredemo\fP
-.\"
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE
-.sp
-There are a number of optimizations that \fBpcre_exec()\fP 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 pattern 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 pattern 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.
-.P
-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 \fBpcre_exec()\fP) disables JIT execution; in this situation, matching is
-always done using interpretively.
-.P
-Setting PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE can change the outcome of a matching operation.
-Consider the pattern
-.sp
- (*COMMIT)ABC
-.sp
-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 pattern 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
-optimizations may be used. For example, a minimum length for the subject may be
-recorded. Consider the pattern
-.sp
- (*MARK:A)(X|Y)
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK
-.sp
-When PCRE_UTF8 is set at compile time, the validity of the subject as a UTF-8
-string is automatically checked when \fBpcre_exec()\fP is subsequently called.
-The entire string is checked before any other processing takes place. The value
-of \fIstartoffset\fP is also checked to ensure that it points to the start of a
-UTF-8 character. There is a discussion about the
-.\" HTML <a href="pcreunicode.html#utf8strings">
-.\" </a>
-validity of UTF-8 strings
-.\"
-in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcreunicode\fP
-.\"
-page. If an invalid sequence of bytes is found, \fBpcre_exec()\fP 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 entitled \fIError return
-values from\fP \fBpcre_exec()\fP
-.\" HTML <a href="#errorlist">
-.\" </a>
-below).
-.\"
-If \fIstartoffset\fP contains 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.
-.P
-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 \fBpcre_exec()\fP. You might want to do this for the second and
-subsequent calls to \fBpcre_exec()\fP 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 \fIstartoffset\fP 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 \fIstartoffset\fP is
-undefined. Your program may crash or loop.
-.sp
- PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD
- PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT
-.sp
-These options turn on the partial matching feature. For backwards
-compatibility, 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.
-.P
-If PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set, it overrides PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT. In this case, if a
-partial match is found, \fBpcre_exec()\fP immediately returns
-PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL, without considering any other alternatives. In other words,
-when PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set, a partial match is considered to be more
-important that an alternative complete match.
-.P
-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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepartial\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.
-.
-.SS "The string to be matched by \fBpcre_exec()\fP"
-.rs
-.sp
-The subject string is passed to \fBpcre_exec()\fP as a pointer in
-\fIsubject\fP, a length in \fIlength\fP, and a starting offset in
-\fIstartoffset\fP. The units for \fIlength\fP and \fIstartoffset\fP 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.
-.P
-If \fIstartoffset\fP is negative or greater than the length of the subject,
-\fBpcre_exec()\fP 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 subject (in UTF-32 mode, one
-data unit equals one character, so all offsets are valid). Unlike the pattern
-string, the subject may contain binary zeroes.
-.P
-A non-zero starting offset is useful when searching for another match in the
-same subject by calling \fBpcre_exec()\fP again after a previous success.
-Setting \fIstartoffset\fP 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
-.sp
- \eBiss\eB
-.sp
-which finds occurrences of "iss" in the middle of words. (\eB matches only if
-the current position in the subject is not a word boundary.) When applied to
-the string "Mississipi" the first call to \fBpcre_exec()\fP finds the first
-occurrence. If \fBpcre_exec()\fP is called again with just the remainder of the
-subject, namely "issipi", it does not match, because \eB is always false at the
-start of the subject, which is deemed to be a word boundary. However, if
-\fBpcre_exec()\fP is passed the entire string again, but with \fIstartoffset\fP
-set to 4, it finds the second occurrence of "iss" because it is able to look
-behind the starting point to discover that it is preceded by a letter.
-.P
-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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcredemo\fP
-.\"
-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.
-.P
-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.
-.
-.
-.SS "How \fBpcre_exec()\fP returns captured substrings"
-.rs
-.sp
-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 substring. PCRE supports several other
-kinds of parenthesized subpattern that do not cause substrings to be captured.
-.P
-Captured substrings are returned to the caller via a vector of integers whose
-address is passed in \fIovector\fP. The number of elements in the vector is
-passed in \fIovecsize\fP, which must be a non-negative number. \fBNote\fP: this
-argument is NOT the size of \fIovector\fP in bytes.
-.P
-The first two-thirds of the vector is used to pass back captured substrings,
-each substring using a pair of integers. The remaining third of the vector is
-used as workspace by \fBpcre_exec()\fP while matching capturing subpatterns,
-and is not available for passing back information. The number passed in
-\fIovecsize\fP should always be a multiple of three. If it is not, it is
-rounded down.
-.P
-When a match is successful, information about captured substrings is returned
-in pairs of integers, starting at the beginning of \fIovector\fP, 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 offsets, 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. \fBNote\fP: they
-are not character counts.
-.P
-The first pair of integers, \fIovector[0]\fP and \fIovector[1]\fP, 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
-\fBpcre_exec()\fP 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.
-.P
-If a capturing subpattern is matched repeatedly, it is the last portion of the
-string that it matched that is returned.
-.P
-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, \fBpcre_exec()\fP may be called with \fIovector\fP
-passed as NULL and \fIovecsize\fP as zero. However, if the pattern contains
-back references and the \fIovector\fP 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 \fIovector\fP of reasonable size.
-.P
-There are some cases where zero is returned (indicating vector overflow) when
-in fact the vector is exactly the right size for the final match. For example,
-consider the pattern
-.sp
- (a)(?:(b)c|bd)
-.sp
-If a vector of 6 elements (allowing for only 1 captured substring) is given
-with subject string "abd", \fBpcre_exec()\fP 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 temporary overflow, but the final
-number of used slots is actually less than the maximum, a non-zero value is
-returned.
-.P
-The \fBpcre_fullinfo()\fP function can be used to find out how many capturing
-subpatterns there are in a compiled pattern. The smallest size for
-\fIovector\fP that will allow for \fIn\fP captured substrings, in addition to
-the offsets of the substring matched by the whole pattern, is (\fIn\fP+1)*3.
-.P
-It is possible for capturing subpattern number \fIn+1\fP to match some part of
-the subject when subpattern \fIn\fP 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 corresponding to unused subpatterns
-are set to -1.
-.P
-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.
-.P
-\fBNote\fP: Elements in the first two-thirds of \fIovector\fP that do not
-correspond to capturing parentheses in the pattern are never changed. That is,
-if a pattern contains \fIn\fP capturing parentheses, no more than
-\fIovector[0]\fP to \fIovector[2n+1]\fP are set by \fBpcre_exec()\fP. The other
-elements (in the first two-thirds) retain whatever values they previously had.
-.P
-Some convenience functions are provided for extracting the captured substrings
-as separate strings. These are described below.
-.
-.
-.\" HTML <a name="errorlist"></a>
-.SS "Error return values from \fBpcre_exec()\fP"
-.rs
-.sp
-If \fBpcre_exec()\fP fails, it returns a negative number. The following are
-defined in the header file:
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_NOMATCH (-1)
-.sp
-The subject string did not match the pattern.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_NULL (-2)
-.sp
-Either \fIcode\fP or \fIsubject\fP was passed as NULL, or \fIovector\fP was
-NULL and \fIovecsize\fP was not zero.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION (-3)
-.sp
-An unrecognized bit was set in the \fIoptions\fP argument.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_BADMAGIC (-4)
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_UNKNOWN_OPCODE (-5)
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_NOMEMORY (-6)
-.sp
-If a pattern contains back references, but the \fIovector\fP that is passed to
-\fBpcre_exec()\fP 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 \fBpcre_malloc()\fP fails, this error is given. The memory is
-automatically freed at the end of matching.
-.P
-This error is also given if \fBpcre_stack_malloc()\fP fails in
-\fBpcre_exec()\fP. This can happen only when PCRE has been compiled with
-\fB--disable-stack-for-recursion\fP.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_NOSUBSTRING (-7)
-.sp
-This error is used by the \fBpcre_copy_substring()\fP,
-\fBpcre_get_substring()\fP, and \fBpcre_get_substring_list()\fP functions (see
-below). It is never returned by \fBpcre_exec()\fP.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_MATCHLIMIT (-8)
-.sp
-The backtracking limit, as specified by the \fImatch_limit\fP field in a
-\fBpcre_extra\fP structure (or defaulted) was reached. See the description
-above.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_CALLOUT (-9)
-.sp
-This error is never generated by \fBpcre_exec()\fP itself. It is provided for
-use by callout functions that want to yield a distinctive error code. See the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrecallout\fP
-.\"
-documentation for details.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8 (-10)
-.sp
-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
-(\fIovecsize\fP) is at least 2, the byte offset to the start of the the invalid
-UTF-8 character is placed in the first element, and a reason code is placed in
-the second element. The reason codes are listed in the
-.\" HTML <a href="#badutf8reasons">
-.\" </a>
-following section.
-.\"
-For backward compatibility, if PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set and the problem is a
-truncated UTF-8 character at the end of the subject (reason codes 1 to 5),
-PCRE_ERROR_SHORTUTF8 is returned instead of PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8_OFFSET (-11)
-.sp
-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
-\fIstartoffset\fP did not point to the beginning of a UTF-8 character or the
-end of the subject.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL (-12)
-.sp
-The subject string did not match, but it did match partially. See the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepartial\fP
-.\"
-documentation for details of partial matching.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_BADPARTIAL (-13)
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_INTERNAL (-14)
-.sp
-An unexpected internal error has occurred. This error could be caused by a bug
-in PCRE or by overwriting of the compiled pattern.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_BADCOUNT (-15)
-.sp
-This error is given if the value of the \fIovecsize\fP argument is negative.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_RECURSIONLIMIT (-21)
-.sp
-The internal recursion limit, as specified by the \fImatch_limit_recursion\fP
-field in a \fBpcre_extra\fP structure (or defaulted) was reached. See the
-description above.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_BADNEWLINE (-23)
-.sp
-An invalid combination of PCRE_NEWLINE_\fIxxx\fP options was given.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_BADOFFSET (-24)
-.sp
-The value of \fIstartoffset\fP was negative or greater than the length of the
-subject, that is, the value in \fIlength\fP.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_SHORTUTF8 (-25)
-.sp
-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 implementation of returned information; it is
-retained for backwards compatibility.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_RECURSELOOP (-26)
-.sp
-This error is returned when \fBpcre_exec()\fP 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, cannot be detected until run
-time.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_JIT_STACKLIMIT (-27)
-.sp
-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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrejit\fP
-.\"
-documentation for more details.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_BADMODE (-28)
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_BADENDIANNESS (-29)
-.sp
-This error is given if a pattern that was compiled and saved is reloaded on a
-host with different endianness. The utility function
-\fBpcre_pattern_to_host_byte_order()\fP can be used to convert such a pattern
-so that it runs on the new host.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_JIT_BADOPTION
-.sp
-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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrejit\fP
-.\"
-documentation for more details.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_BADLENGTH (-32)
-.sp
-This error is given if \fBpcre_exec()\fP is called with a negative value for
-the \fIlength\fP argument.
-.P
-Error numbers -16 to -20, -22, and 30 are not used by \fBpcre_exec()\fP.
-.
-.
-.\" HTML <a name="badutf8reasons"></a>
-.SS "Reason codes for invalid UTF-8 strings"
-.rs
-.sp
-This section applies only to the 8-bit library. The corresponding information
-for the 16-bit and 32-bit libraries is given in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcre16\fP
-.\"
-and
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcre32\fP
-.\"
-pages.
-.P
-When \fBpcre_exec()\fP returns either PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8 or
-PCRE_ERROR_SHORTUTF8, and the size of the output vector (\fIovecsize\fP) is at
-least 2, the offset of the start of the invalid UTF-8 character is placed in
-the first output vector element (\fIovector[0]\fP) and a reason code is placed
-in the second element (\fIovector[1]\fP). The reason codes are given names in
-the \fBpcre.h\fP header file:
-.sp
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR1
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR2
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR3
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR4
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR5
-.sp
-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 (originally defined by RFC 2279)
-allows for up to 6 bytes, and this is checked first; hence the possibility of
-4 or 5 missing bytes.
-.sp
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR6
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR7
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR8
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR9
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR10
-.sp
-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).
-.sp
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR11
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR12
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR13
-.sp
-A 4-byte character has a value greater than 0x10fff; these code points are
-excluded by RFC 3629.
-.sp
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR14
-.sp
-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.
-.sp
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR15
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR16
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR17
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR18
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR19
-.sp
-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 correct coding uses just
-one byte.
-.sp
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR20
-.sp
-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 second is 0). Such a
-byte can only validly occur as the second or subsequent byte of a multi-byte
-character.
-.sp
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR21
-.sp
-The first byte of a character has the value 0xfe or 0xff. These values can
-never occur in a valid UTF-8 string.
-.sp
- PCRE_UTF8_ERR22
-.sp
-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.
-.
-.
-.SH "EXTRACTING CAPTURED SUBSTRINGS BY NUMBER"
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-.B int pcre_copy_substring(const char *\fIsubject\fP, int *\fIovector\fP,
-.B " int \fIstringcount\fP, int \fIstringnumber\fP, char *\fIbuffer\fP,"
-.B " int \fIbuffersize\fP);"
-.sp
-.B int pcre_get_substring(const char *\fIsubject\fP, int *\fIovector\fP,
-.B " int \fIstringcount\fP, int \fIstringnumber\fP,"
-.B " const char **\fIstringptr\fP);"
-.sp
-.B int pcre_get_substring_list(const char *\fIsubject\fP,
-.B " int *\fIovector\fP, int \fIstringcount\fP, const char ***\fIlistptr\fP);"
-.fi
-.PP
-Captured substrings can be accessed directly by using the offsets returned by
-\fBpcre_exec()\fP in \fIovector\fP. For convenience, the functions
-\fBpcre_copy_substring()\fP, \fBpcre_get_substring()\fP, and
-\fBpcre_get_substring_list()\fP 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.
-.P
-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 \fBpcre_copy_substring()\fP and \fBpcre_get_substring()\fP.
-Unfortunately, the interface to \fBpcre_get_substring_list()\fP is not adequate
-for handling strings containing binary zeros, because the end of the final
-string is not independently indicated.
-.P
-The first three arguments are the same for all three of these functions:
-\fIsubject\fP is the subject string that has just been successfully matched,
-\fIovector\fP is a pointer to the vector of integer offsets that was passed to
-\fBpcre_exec()\fP, and \fIstringcount\fP 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 \fBpcre_exec()\fP if it is greater
-than zero. If \fBpcre_exec()\fP returned zero, indicating that it ran out of
-space in \fIovector\fP, the value passed as \fIstringcount\fP should be the
-number of elements in the vector divided by three.
-.P
-The functions \fBpcre_copy_substring()\fP and \fBpcre_get_substring()\fP
-extract a single substring, whose number is given as \fIstringnumber\fP. A
-value of zero extracts the substring that matched the entire pattern, whereas
-higher values extract the captured substrings. For \fBpcre_copy_substring()\fP,
-the string is placed in \fIbuffer\fP, whose length is given by
-\fIbuffersize\fP, while for \fBpcre_get_substring()\fP a new block of memory is
-obtained via \fBpcre_malloc\fP, and its address is returned via
-\fIstringptr\fP. The yield of the function is the length of the string, not
-including the terminating zero, or one of these error codes:
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_NOMEMORY (-6)
-.sp
-The buffer was too small for \fBpcre_copy_substring()\fP, or the attempt to get
-memory failed for \fBpcre_get_substring()\fP.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_NOSUBSTRING (-7)
-.sp
-There is no substring whose number is \fIstringnumber\fP.
-.P
-The \fBpcre_get_substring_list()\fP function extracts all available substrings
-and builds a list of pointers to them. All this is done in a single block of
-memory that is obtained via \fBpcre_malloc\fP. The address of the memory block
-is returned via \fIlistptr\fP, 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
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_NOMEMORY (-6)
-.sp
-if the attempt to get the memory block failed.
-.P
-When any of these functions encounter a substring that is unset, which can
-happen when capturing subpattern number \fIn+1\fP matches some part of the
-subject, but subpattern \fIn\fP has not been used at all, they return an empty
-string. This can be distinguished from a genuine zero-length substring by
-inspecting the appropriate offset in \fIovector\fP, which is negative for unset
-substrings.
-.P
-The two convenience functions \fBpcre_free_substring()\fP and
-\fBpcre_free_substring_list()\fP can be used to free the memory returned by
-a previous call of \fBpcre_get_substring()\fP or
-\fBpcre_get_substring_list()\fP, respectively. They do nothing more than call
-the function pointed to by \fBpcre_free\fP, which of course could be called
-directly from a C program. However, PCRE is used in some situations where it is
-linked via a special interface to another programming language that cannot use
-\fBpcre_free\fP directly; it is for these cases that the functions are
-provided.
-.
-.
-.SH "EXTRACTING CAPTURED SUBSTRINGS BY NAME"
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-.B int pcre_get_stringnumber(const pcre *\fIcode\fP,
-.B " const char *\fIname\fP);"
-.sp
-.B int pcre_copy_named_substring(const pcre *\fIcode\fP,
-.B " const char *\fIsubject\fP, int *\fIovector\fP,"
-.B " int \fIstringcount\fP, const char *\fIstringname\fP,"
-.B " char *\fIbuffer\fP, int \fIbuffersize\fP);"
-.sp
-.B int pcre_get_named_substring(const pcre *\fIcode\fP,
-.B " const char *\fIsubject\fP, int *\fIovector\fP,"
-.B " int \fIstringcount\fP, const char *\fIstringname\fP,"
-.B " const char **\fIstringptr\fP);"
-.fi
-.PP
-To extract a substring by name, you first have to find associated number.
-For example, for this pattern
-.sp
- (a+)b(?<xxx>\ed+)...
-.sp
-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 \fBpcre_get_stringnumber()\fP. The first argument is the compiled
-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.
-.P
-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.
-.P
-Most of the arguments of \fBpcre_copy_named_substring()\fP and
-\fBpcre_get_named_substring()\fP 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:
-.P
-First, instead of a substring number, a substring name is given. Second, 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.
-.P
-These functions call \fBpcre_get_stringnumber()\fP, and if it succeeds, they
-then call \fBpcre_copy_substring()\fP or \fBpcre_get_substring()\fP, as
-appropriate. \fBNOTE:\fP If PCRE_DUPNAMES is set and there are duplicate names,
-the behaviour may not be what you want (see the next section).
-.P
-\fBWarning:\fP If the pattern uses the (?| feature to set up multiple
-subpatterns with the same number, as described in the
-.\" HTML <a href="pcrepattern.html#dupsubpatternnumber">
-.\" </a>
-section on duplicate subpattern numbers
-.\"
-in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepattern\fP
-.\"
-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.
-.
-.
-.SH "DUPLICATE SUBPATTERN NAMES"
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-.B int pcre_get_stringtable_entries(const pcre *\fIcode\fP,
-.B " const char *\fIname\fP, char **\fIfirst\fP, char **\fIlast\fP);"
-.fi
-.PP
-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.)
-.P
-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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepattern\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.P
-When duplicates are present, \fBpcre_copy_named_substring()\fP and
-\fBpcre_get_named_substring()\fP 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 \fBpcre_get_stringnumber()\fP function
-returns one of the numbers that are associated with the name, but it is not
-defined which it is.
-.P
-If you want to get full details of all captured substrings for a given name,
-you must use the \fBpcre_get_stringtable_entries()\fP 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 section entitled \fIInformation about a pattern\fP
-.\" HTML <a href="#infoaboutpattern">
-.\" </a>
-above.
-.\"
-Given all the relevant entries for the name, you can extract each of their
-numbers, and hence the captured data, if any.
-.
-.
-.SH "FINDING ALL POSSIBLE MATCHES"
-.rs
-.sp
-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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrecallout\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.P
-What you have to do is to insert a callout right at the end of the pattern.
-When your callout function is called, extract and save the current matched
-substring. Then return 1, which forces \fBpcre_exec()\fP to backtrack and try
-other alternatives. Ultimately, when it runs out of matches, \fBpcre_exec()\fP
-will yield PCRE_ERROR_NOMATCH.
-.
-.
-.SH "OBTAINING AN ESTIMATE OF STACK USAGE"
-.rs
-.sp
-Matching certain patterns using \fBpcre_exec()\fP 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
-\fBpcre_exec()\fP, to help them set recursion limits, as described in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrestack\fP
-.\"
-documentation. The estimate that is output by \fBpcretest\fP when called with
-the \fB-m\fP and \fB-C\fP options is obtained by calling \fBpcre_exec\fP with
-the values NULL, NULL, NULL, -999, and -999 for its first five arguments.
-.P
-Normally, if its first argument is NULL, \fBpcre_exec()\fP 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 negative number is used so that it is
-clear that no match has happened.) The value is approximate because in some
-cases, recursive calls to \fBpcre_exec()\fP occur when there are one or two
-additional variables on the stack.
-.P
-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.
-.
-.
-.\" HTML <a name="dfamatch"></a>
-.SH "MATCHING A PATTERN: THE ALTERNATIVE FUNCTION"
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-.B int pcre_dfa_exec(const pcre *\fIcode\fP, "const pcre_extra *\fIextra\fP,"
-.B " const char *\fIsubject\fP, int \fIlength\fP, int \fIstartoffset\fP,"
-.B " int \fIoptions\fP, int *\fIovector\fP, int \fIovecsize\fP,"
-.B " int *\fIworkspace\fP, int \fIwscount\fP);"
-.fi
-.P
-The function \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP 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. Nevertheless, 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 \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP does not support, see the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrematching\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.P
-The arguments for the \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP function are the same as for
-\fBpcre_exec()\fP, plus two extras. The \fIovector\fP argument is used in a
-different way, and this is described below. The other common arguments are used
-in the same way as for \fBpcre_exec()\fP, so their description is not repeated
-here.
-.P
-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.
-.P
-Here is an example of a simple call to \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP:
-.sp
- 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) */
-.
-.SS "Option bits for \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP"
-.rs
-.sp
-The unused bits of the \fIoptions\fP argument for \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP must be
-zero. The only bits that may be set are PCRE_ANCHORED, PCRE_NEWLINE_\fIxxx\fP,
-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_PARTIAL_SOFT, PCRE_DFA_SHORTEST, and PCRE_DFA_RESTART.
-All but the last four of these are exactly the same as for \fBpcre_exec()\fP,
-so their description is not repeated here.
-.sp
- PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD
- PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT
-.sp
-These have the same general effect as they do for \fBpcre_exec()\fP, but the
-details are slightly different. When PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD is set for
-\fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP, it returns PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL if the end of the subject
-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
-examples, in the
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepartial\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.sp
- PCRE_DFA_SHORTEST
-.sp
-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 alternative algorithm
-works, this is necessarily the shortest possible match at the first possible
-matching point in the subject string.
-.sp
- PCRE_DFA_RESTART
-.sp
-When \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP 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
-\fIworkspace\fP and \fIwscount\fP 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
-.\" HREF
-\fBpcrepartial\fP
-.\"
-documentation.
-.
-.
-.SS "Successful returns from \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP"
-.rs
-.sp
-When \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP succeeds, it may have matched more than one
-substring 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
-.sp
- <.*>
-.sp
-is matched against the string
-.sp
- This is <something> <something else> <something further> no more
-.sp
-the three matched strings are
-.sp
- <something>
- <something> <something else>
- <something> <something else> <something further>
-.sp
-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
-\fIovector\fP. 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 \fBpcre_exec()\fP
-returns data, even though the meaning of the strings is different.)
-.P
-The strings are returned in reverse order of length; that is, the longest
-matching string is given first. If there were too many matches to fit into
-\fIovector\fP, the yield of the function is zero, and the vector is filled with
-the longest matches. Unlike \fBpcre_exec()\fP, \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP can use
-the entire \fIovector\fP for returning matched strings.
-.P
-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\ed+" is compiled as if it were "a\ed++" 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\ed+?") or set the PCRE_NO_AUTO_POSSESS option when compiling.
-.
-.
-.SS "Error returns from \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP"
-.rs
-.sp
-The \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP function returns a negative number when it fails.
-Many of the errors are the same as for \fBpcre_exec()\fP, and these are
-described
-.\" HTML <a href="#errorlist">
-.\" </a>
-above.
-.\"
-There are in addition the following errors that are specific to
-\fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP:
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_DFA_UITEM (-16)
-.sp
-This return is given if \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP encounters an item in the pattern
-that it does not support, for instance, the use of \eC or a back reference.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_DFA_UCOND (-17)
-.sp
-This return is given if \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP 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.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_DFA_UMLIMIT (-18)
-.sp
-This return is given if \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP is called with an \fIextra\fP
-block that contains a setting of the \fImatch_limit\fP or
-\fImatch_limit_recursion\fP fields. This is not supported (these fields are
-meaningless for DFA matching).
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_DFA_WSSIZE (-19)
-.sp
-This return is given if \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP runs out of space in the
-\fIworkspace\fP vector.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_DFA_RECURSE (-20)
-.sp
-When a recursive subpattern is processed, the matching function calls itself
-recursively, using private vectors for \fIovector\fP and \fIworkspace\fP. 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.
-.sp
- PCRE_ERROR_DFA_BADRESTART (-30)
-.sp
-When \fBpcre_dfa_exec()\fP is called with the \fBPCRE_DFA_RESTART\fP 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.
-.
-.
-.SH "SEE ALSO"
-.rs
-.sp
-\fBpcre16\fP(3), \fBpcre32\fP(3), \fBpcrebuild\fP(3), \fBpcrecallout\fP(3),
-\fBpcrecpp(3)\fP(3), \fBpcrematching\fP(3), \fBpcrepartial\fP(3),
-\fBpcreposix\fP(3), \fBpcreprecompile\fP(3), \fBpcresample\fP(3),
-\fBpcrestack\fP(3).
-.
-.
-.SH AUTHOR
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-Philip Hazel
-University Computing Service
-Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
-.fi
-.
-.
-.SH REVISION
-.rs
-.sp
-.nf
-Last updated: 18 December 2015
-Copyright (c) 1997-2015 University of Cambridge.
-.fi