From 844c971d8aeb2693bc01739963f5da675b989d03 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Kirill Volinsky
+Return to the PCRE index page.
+
+This page is part of the PCRE HTML documentation. It was generated automatically
+from the original man page. If there is any nonsense in it, please consult the
+man page, in case the conversion went wrong.
+
+This document describes the differences in the ways that PCRE and Perl handle
+regular expressions. The differences described here are with respect to Perl
+versions 5.10 and above.
+
+1. PCRE has only a subset of Perl's Unicode support. Details of what it does
+have are given in the
+pcreunicode
+page.
+
+2. PCRE allows repeat quantifiers only on parenthesized assertions, but they do
+not mean what you might think. For example, (?!a){3} does not assert that the
+next three characters are not "a". It just asserts that the next character is
+not "a" three times (in principle: PCRE optimizes this to run the assertion
+just once). Perl allows repeat quantifiers on other assertions such as \b, but
+these do not seem to have any use.
+
+3. Capturing subpatterns that occur inside negative lookahead assertions are
+counted, but their entries in the offsets vector are never set. Perl sometimes
+(but not always) sets its numerical variables from inside negative assertions.
+
+4. Though binary zero characters are supported in the subject string, they are
+not allowed in a pattern string because it is passed as a normal C string,
+terminated by zero. The escape sequence \0 can be used in the pattern to
+represent a binary zero.
+
+5. The following Perl escape sequences are not supported: \l, \u, \L,
+\U, and \N when followed by a character name or Unicode value. (\N on its
+own, matching a non-newline character, is supported.) In fact these are
+implemented by Perl's general string-handling and are not part of its pattern
+matching engine. If any of these are encountered by PCRE, an error is
+generated by default. However, if the PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT option is set,
+\U and \u are interpreted as JavaScript interprets them.
+
+6. The Perl escape sequences \p, \P, and \X are supported only if PCRE is
+built with Unicode character property support. The properties that can be
+tested with \p and \P are limited to the general category properties such as
+Lu and Nd, script names such as Greek or Han, and the derived properties Any
+and L&. PCRE does support the Cs (surrogate) property, which Perl does not; the
+Perl documentation says "Because Perl hides the need for the user to understand
+the internal representation of Unicode characters, there is no need to
+implement the somewhat messy concept of surrogates."
+
+7. PCRE does support the \Q...\E escape for quoting substrings. Characters in
+between are treated as literals. This is slightly different from Perl in that $
+and @ are also handled as literals inside the quotes. In Perl, they cause
+variable interpolation (but of course PCRE does not have variables). Note the
+following examples:
+pcrecompat man page
+
+
+DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PCRE AND PERL
+
+
+ Pattern PCRE matches Perl matches
+
+ \Qabc$xyz\E abc$xyz abc followed by the contents of $xyz
+ \Qabc\$xyz\E abc\$xyz abc\$xyz
+ \Qabc\E\$\Qxyz\E abc$xyz abc$xyz
+
+The \Q...\E sequence is recognized both inside and outside character classes.
+
+8. Fairly obviously, PCRE does not support the (?{code}) and (??{code}) +constructions. However, there is support for recursive patterns. This is not +available in Perl 5.8, but it is in Perl 5.10. Also, the PCRE "callout" +feature allows an external function to be called during pattern matching. See +the +pcrecallout +documentation for details. +
++9. Subpatterns that are called as subroutines (whether or not recursively) are +always treated as atomic groups in PCRE. This is like Python, but unlike Perl. +Captured values that are set outside a subroutine call can be reference from +inside in PCRE, but not in Perl. There is a discussion that explains these +differences in more detail in the +section on recursion differences from Perl +in the +pcrepattern +page. +
++10. If any of the backtracking control verbs are used in a subpattern that is +called as a subroutine (whether or not recursively), their effect is confined +to that subpattern; it does not extend to the surrounding pattern. This is not +always the case in Perl. In particular, if (*THEN) is present in a group that +is called as a subroutine, its action is limited to that group, even if the +group does not contain any | characters. Note that such subpatterns are +processed as anchored at the point where they are tested. +
++11. If a pattern contains more than one backtracking control verb, the first +one that is backtracked onto acts. For example, in the pattern +A(*COMMIT)B(*PRUNE)C a failure in B triggers (*COMMIT), but a failure in C +triggers (*PRUNE). Perl's behaviour is more complex; in many cases it is the +same as PCRE, but there are examples where it differs. +
++12. Most backtracking verbs in assertions have their normal actions. They are +not confined to the assertion. +
++13. There are some differences that are concerned with the settings of captured +strings when part of a pattern is repeated. For example, matching "aba" against +the pattern /^(a(b)?)+$/ in Perl leaves $2 unset, but in PCRE it is set to "b". +
++14. PCRE's handling of duplicate subpattern numbers and duplicate subpattern +names is not as general as Perl's. This is a consequence of the fact the PCRE +works internally just with numbers, using an external table to translate +between numbers and names. In particular, a pattern such as (?|(?<a>A)|(?<b)B), +where the two capturing parentheses have the same number but different names, +is not supported, and causes an error at compile time. If it were allowed, it +would not be possible to distinguish which parentheses matched, because both +names map to capturing subpattern number 1. To avoid this confusing situation, +an error is given at compile time. +
++15. Perl recognizes comments in some places that PCRE does not, for example, +between the ( and ? at the start of a subpattern. If the /x modifier is set, +Perl allows white space between ( and ? (though current Perls warn that this is +deprecated) but PCRE never does, even if the PCRE_EXTENDED option is set. +
++16. Perl, when in warning mode, gives warnings for character classes such as +[A-\d] or [a-[:digit:]]. It then treats the hyphens as literals. PCRE has no +warning features, so it gives an error in these cases because they are almost +certainly user mistakes. +
++17. In PCRE, the upper/lower case character properties Lu and Ll are not +affected when case-independent matching is specified. For example, \p{Lu} +always matches an upper case letter. I think Perl has changed in this respect; +in the release at the time of writing (5.16), \p{Lu} and \p{Ll} match all +letters, regardless of case, when case independence is specified. +
+
+18. PCRE provides some extensions to the Perl regular expression facilities.
+Perl 5.10 includes new features that are not in earlier versions of Perl, some
+of which (such as named parentheses) have been in PCRE for some time. This list
+is with respect to Perl 5.10:
+
+
+(a) Although lookbehind assertions in PCRE must match fixed length strings,
+each alternative branch of a lookbehind assertion can match a different length
+of string. Perl requires them all to have the same length.
+
+
+(b) If PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY is set and PCRE_MULTILINE is not set, the $
+meta-character matches only at the very end of the string.
+
+
+(c) If PCRE_EXTRA is set, a backslash followed by a letter with no special
+meaning is faulted. Otherwise, like Perl, the backslash is quietly ignored.
+(Perl can be made to issue a warning.)
+
+
+(d) If PCRE_UNGREEDY is set, the greediness of the repetition quantifiers is
+inverted, that is, by default they are not greedy, but if followed by a
+question mark they are.
+
+
+(e) PCRE_ANCHORED can be used at matching time to force a pattern to be tried
+only at the first matching position in the subject string.
+
+
+(f) The PCRE_NOTBOL, PCRE_NOTEOL, PCRE_NOTEMPTY, PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART, and
+PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE options for pcre_exec() have no Perl equivalents.
+
+
+(g) The \R escape sequence can be restricted to match only CR, LF, or CRLF
+by the PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF option.
+
+
+(h) The callout facility is PCRE-specific.
+
+
+(i) The partial matching facility is PCRE-specific.
+
+
+(j) Patterns compiled by PCRE can be saved and re-used at a later time, even on
+different hosts that have the other endianness. However, this does not apply to
+optimized data created by the just-in-time compiler.
+
+
+(k) The alternative matching functions (pcre_dfa_exec(),
+pcre16_dfa_exec() and pcre32_dfa_exec(),) match in a different way
+and are not Perl-compatible.
+
+
+(l) PCRE recognizes some special sequences such as (*CR) at the start of
+a pattern that set overall options that cannot be changed within the pattern.
+
+Philip Hazel
+
+University Computing Service
+
+Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
+
+
+Last updated: 10 November 2013
+
+Copyright © 1997-2013 University of Cambridge.
+
+
+Return to the PCRE index page. +
-- cgit v1.2.3