PCRE(3)PCRE(3)NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
PCRE REGULAR EXPRESSION DETAILS
The syntax and semantics of the regular expressions supported by PCRE
are described below. Regular expressions are also described in the Perl
documentation and in a number of other books, some of which have copi‐
ous examples. Jeffrey Friedl's "Mastering Regular Expressions", pub‐
lished by O'Reilly, covers them in great detail. The description here
is intended as reference documentation.
The basic operation of PCRE is on strings of bytes. However, there is
also support for UTF-8 character strings. To use this support you must
build PCRE to include UTF-8 support, and then call pcre_compile() with
the PCRE_UTF8 option. How this affects the pattern matching is men‐
tioned in several places below. There is also a summary of UTF-8 fea‐
tures in the section on UTF-8 support in the main pcre page.
A regular expression is a pattern that is matched against a subject
string from left to right. Most characters stand for themselves in a
pattern, and match the corresponding characters in the subject. As a
trivial example, the pattern
The quick brown fox
matches a portion of a subject string that is identical to itself. The
power of regular expressions comes from the ability to include alterna‐
tives and repetitions in the pattern. These are encoded in the pattern
by the use of meta-characters, which do not stand for themselves but
instead are interpreted in some special way.
There are two different sets of meta-characters: those that are recog‐
nized anywhere in the pattern except within square brackets, and those
that are recognized in square brackets. Outside square brackets, the
meta-characters are as follows:
\ general escape character with several uses
^ assert start of string (or line, in multiline mode)
$ assert end of string (or line, in multiline mode)
. match any character except newline (by default)
[ start character class definition
| start of alternative branch
( start subpattern
) end subpattern
? extends the meaning of (
also 0 or 1 quantifier
also quantifier minimizer
* 0 or more quantifier
+ 1 or more quantifier
also "possessive quantifier"
{ start min/max quantifier
Part of a pattern that is in square brackets is called a "character
class". In a character class the only meta-characters are:
\ general escape character
^ negate the class, but only if the first character
- indicates character range
[ POSIX character class (only if followed by POSIX
syntax)
] terminates the character class
The following sections describe the use of each of the meta-characters.
BACKSLASH
The backslash character has several uses. Firstly, if it is followed by
a non-alphameric character, it takes away any special meaning that
character may have. This use of backslash as an escape character
applies both inside and outside character classes.
For example, if you want to match a * character, you write \* in the
pattern. This escaping action applies whether or not the following
character would otherwise be interpreted as a meta-character, so it is
always safe to precede a non-alphameric with backslash to specify that
it stands for itself. In particular, if you want to match a backslash,
you write \\.
If a pattern is compiled with the PCRE_EXTENDED option, whitespace in
the pattern (other than in a character class) and characters between a
# outside a character class and the next newline character are ignored.
An escaping backslash can be used to include a whitespace or # charac‐
ter as part of the pattern.
If you want to remove the special meaning from a sequence of charac‐
ters, you can do so by putting them between \Q and \E. This is differ‐
ent from Perl in that $ and @ are handled as literals in \Q...\E
sequences in PCRE, whereas in Perl, $ and @ cause variable interpola‐
tion. Note the following examples:
Pattern PCRE matches Perl matches
\Qabc$xyz\E abc$xyz abc followed by the
contents of $xyz
\Qabc\$xyz\E abc\$xyz abc\$xyz
\Qabc\E\$\Qxyz\E abc$xyz abc$xyz
The \Q...\E sequence is recognized both inside and outside character
classes.
A second use of backslash provides a way of encoding non-printing char‐
acters in patterns in a visible manner. There is no restriction on the
appearance of non-printing characters, apart from the binary zero that
terminates a pattern, but when a pattern is being prepared by text
editing, it is usually easier to use one of the following escape
sequences than the binary character it represents:
\a alarm, that is, the BEL character (hex 07)
\cx "control-x", where x is any character
\e escape (hex 1B)
\f formfeed (hex 0C)
\n newline (hex 0A)
\r carriage return (hex 0D)
\t tab (hex 09)
\ddd character with octal code ddd, or backreference
\xhh character with hex code hh
\x{hhh..} character with hex code hhh... (UTF-8 mode only)
The precise effect of \cx is as follows: if x is a lower case letter,
it is converted to upper case. Then bit 6 of the character (hex 40) is
inverted. Thus \cz becomes hex 1A, but \c{ becomes hex 3B, while \c;
becomes hex 7B.
After \x, from zero to two hexadecimal digits are read (letters can be
in upper or lower case). In UTF-8 mode, any number of hexadecimal dig‐
its may appear between \x{ and }, but the value of the character code
must be less than 2**31 (that is, the maximum hexadecimal value is
7FFFFFFF). If characters other than hexadecimal digits appear between
\x{ and }, or if there is no terminating }, this form of escape is not
recognized. Instead, the initial \x will be interpreted as a basic
hexadecimal escape, with no following digits, giving a byte whose value
is zero.
Characters whose value is less than 256 can be defined by either of the
two syntaxes for \x when PCRE is in UTF-8 mode. There is no difference
in the way they are handled. For example, \xdc is exactly the same as
\x{dc}.
After \0 up to two further octal digits are read. In both cases, if
there are fewer than two digits, just those that are present are used.
Thus the sequence \0\x\07 specifies two binary zeros followed by a BEL
character (code value 7). Make sure you supply two digits after the
initial zero if the character that follows is itself an octal digit.
The handling of a backslash followed by a digit other than 0 is compli‐
cated. Outside a character class, PCRE reads it and any following dig‐
its as a decimal number. If the number is less than 10, or if there
have been at least that many previous capturing left parentheses in the
expression, the entire sequence is taken as a back reference. A
description of how this works is given later, following the discussion
of parenthesized subpatterns.
Inside a character class, or if the decimal number is greater than 9
and there have not been that many capturing subpatterns, PCRE re-reads
up to three octal digits following the backslash, and generates a sin‐
gle byte from the least significant 8 bits of the value. Any subsequent
digits stand for themselves. For example:
\040 is another way of writing a space
\40 is the same, provided there are fewer than 40
previous capturing subpatterns
\7 is always a back reference
\11 might be a back reference, or another way of
writing a tab
\011 is always a tab
\0113 is a tab followed by the character "3"
\113 might be a back reference, otherwise the
character with octal code 113
\377 might be a back reference, otherwise
the byte consisting entirely of 1 bits
\81 is either a back reference, or a binary zero
followed by the two characters "8" and "1"
Note that octal values of 100 or greater must not be introduced by a
leading zero, because no more than three octal digits are ever read.
All the sequences that define a single byte value or a single UTF-8
character (in UTF-8 mode) can be used both inside and outside character
classes. In addition, inside a character class, the sequence \b is
interpreted as the backspace character (hex 08). Outside a character
class it has a different meaning (see below).
The third use of backslash is for specifying generic character types:
\d any decimal digit
\D any character that is not a decimal digit
\s any whitespace character
\S any character that is not a whitespace character
\w any "word" character
\W any "non-word" character
Each pair of escape sequences partitions the complete set of characters
into two disjoint sets. Any given character matches one, and only one,
of each pair.
In UTF-8 mode, characters with values greater than 255 never match \d,
\s, or \w, and always match \D, \S, and \W.
For compatibility with Perl, \s does not match the VT character (code
11). This makes it different from the the POSIX "space" class. The \s
characters are HT (9), LF (10), FF (12), CR (13), and space (32).
A "word" character is any letter or digit or the underscore character,
that is, any character which can be part of a Perl "word". The defini‐
tion of letters and digits is controlled by PCRE's character tables,
and may vary if locale- specific matching is taking place (see "Locale
support" in the pcreapi page). For example, in the "fr" (French)
locale, some character codes greater than 128 are used for accented
letters, and these are matched by \w.
These character type sequences can appear both inside and outside char‐
acter classes. They each match one character of the appropriate type.
If the current matching point is at the end of the subject string, all
of them fail, since there is no character to match.
The fourth use of backslash is for certain simple assertions. An asser‐
tion specifies a condition that has to be met at a particular point in
a match, without consuming any characters from the subject string. The
use of subpatterns for more complicated assertions is described below.
The backslashed assertions are
\b matches at a word boundary
\B matches when not at a word boundary
\A matches at start of subject
\Z matches at end of subject or before newline at end
\z matches at end of subject
\G matches at first matching position in subject
These assertions may not appear in character classes (but note that \b
has a different meaning, namely the backspace character, inside a char‐
acter class).
A word boundary is a position in the subject string where the current
character and the previous character do not both match \w or \W (i.e.
one matches \w and the other matches \W), or the start or end of the
string if the first or last character matches \w, respectively.
The \A, \Z, and \z assertions differ from the traditional circumflex
and dollar (described below) in that they only ever match at the very
start and end of the subject string, whatever options are set. Thus,
they are independent of multiline mode.
They are not affected by the PCRE_NOTBOL or PCRE_NOTEOL options. If the
startoffset argument of pcre_exec() is non-zero, indicating that match‐
ing is to start at a point other than the beginning of the subject, \A
can never match. The difference between \Z and \z is that \Z matches
before a newline that is the last character of the string as well as at
the end of the string, whereas \z matches only at the end.
The \G assertion is true only when the current matching position is at
the start point of the match, as specified by the startoffset argument
of pcre_exec(). It differs from \A when the value of startoffset is
non-zero. By calling pcre_exec() multiple times with appropriate argu‐
ments, you can mimic Perl's /g option, and it is in this kind of imple‐
mentation where \G can be useful.
Note, however, that PCRE's interpretation of \G, as the start of the
current match, is subtly different from Perl's, which defines it as the
end of the previous match. In Perl, these can be different when the
previously matched string was empty. Because PCRE does just one match
at a time, it cannot reproduce this behaviour.
If all the alternatives of a pattern begin with \G, the expression is
anchored to the starting match position, and the "anchored" flag is set
in the compiled regular expression.
CIRCUMFLEX AND DOLLAR
Outside a character class, in the default matching mode, the circumflex
character is an assertion which is true only if the current matching
point is at the start of the subject string. If the startoffset argu‐
ment of pcre_exec() is non-zero, circumflex can never match if the
PCRE_MULTILINE option is unset. Inside a character class, circumflex
has an entirely different meaning (see below).
Circumflex need not be the first character of the pattern if a number
of alternatives are involved, but it should be the first thing in each
alternative in which it appears if the pattern is ever to match that
branch. If all possible alternatives start with a circumflex, that is,
if the pattern is constrained to match only at the start of the sub‐
ject, it is said to be an "anchored" pattern. (There are also other
constructs that can cause a pattern to be anchored.)
A dollar character is an assertion which is true only if the current
matching point is at the end of the subject string, or immediately
before a newline character that is the last character in the string (by
default). Dollar need not be the last character of the pattern if a
number of alternatives are involved, but it should be the last item in
any branch in which it appears. Dollar has no special meaning in a
character class.
The meaning of dollar can be changed so that it matches only at the
very end of the string, by setting the PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY option at
compile time. This does not affect the \Z assertion.
The meanings of the circumflex and dollar characters are changed if the
PCRE_MULTILINE option is set. When this is the case, they match immedi‐
ately after and immediately before an internal newline character,
respectively, in addition to matching at the start and end of the sub‐
ject string. For example, the pattern /^abc$/ matches the subject
string "def\nabc" in multiline mode, but not otherwise. Consequently,
patterns that are anchored in single line mode because all branches
start with ^ are not anchored in multiline mode, and a match for cir‐
cumflex is possible when the startoffset argument of pcre_exec() is
non-zero. The PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY option is ignored if PCRE_MULTILINE
is set.
Note that the sequences \A, \Z, and \z can be used to match the start
and end of the subject in both modes, and if all branches of a pattern
start with \A it is always anchored, whether PCRE_MULTILINE is set or
not.
FULL STOP (PERIOD, DOT)
Outside a character class, a dot in the pattern matches any one charac‐
ter in the subject, including a non-printing character, but not (by
default) newline. In UTF-8 mode, a dot matches any UTF-8 character,
which might be more than one byte long, except (by default) for new‐
line. If the PCRE_DOTALL option is set, dots match newlines as well.
The handling of dot is entirely independent of the handling of circum‐
flex and dollar, the only relationship being that they both involve
newline characters. Dot has no special meaning in a character class.
MATCHING A SINGLE BYTE
Outside a character class, the escape sequence \C matches any one byte,
both in and out of UTF-8 mode. Unlike a dot, it always matches a new‐
line. The feature is provided in Perl in order to match individual
bytes in UTF-8 mode. Because it breaks up UTF-8 characters into indi‐
vidual bytes, what remains in the string may be a malformed UTF-8
string. For this reason it is best avoided.
PCRE does not allow \C to appear in lookbehind assertions (see below),
because in UTF-8 mode it makes it impossible to calculate the length of
the lookbehind.
SQUARE BRACKETS
An opening square bracket introduces a character class, terminated by a
closing square bracket. A closing square bracket on its own is not spe‐
cial. If a closing square bracket is required as a member of the class,
it should be the first data character in the class (after an initial
circumflex, if present) or escaped with a backslash.
A character class matches a single character in the subject. In UTF-8
mode, the character may occupy more than one byte. A matched character
must be in the set of characters defined by the class, unless the first
character in the class definition is a circumflex, in which case the
subject character must not be in the set defined by the class. If a
circumflex is actually required as a member of the class, ensure it is
not the first character, or escape it with a backslash.
For example, the character class [aeiou] matches any lower case vowel,
while [^aeiou] matches any character that is not a lower case vowel.
Note that a circumflex is just a convenient notation for specifying the
characters which are in the class by enumerating those that are not. It
is not an assertion: it still consumes a character from the subject
string, and fails if the current pointer is at the end of the string.
In UTF-8 mode, characters with values greater than 255 can be included
in a class as a literal string of bytes, or by using the \x{ escaping
mechanism.
When caseless matching is set, any letters in a class represent both
their upper case and lower case versions, so for example, a caseless
[aeiou] matches "A" as well as "a", and a caseless [^aeiou] does not
match "A", whereas a caseful version would. PCRE does not support the
concept of case for characters with values greater than 255.
The newline character is never treated in any special way in character
classes, whatever the setting of the PCRE_DOTALL or PCRE_MULTILINE
options is. A class such as [^a] will always match a newline.
The minus (hyphen) character can be used to specify a range of charac‐
ters in a character class. For example, [d-m] matches any letter
between d and m, inclusive. If a minus character is required in a
class, it must be escaped with a backslash or appear in a position
where it cannot be interpreted as indicating a range, typically as the
first or last character in the class.
It is not possible to have the literal character "]" as the end charac‐
ter of a range. A pattern such as [W-]46] is interpreted as a class of
two characters ("W" and "-") followed by a literal string "46]", so it
would match "W46]" or "-46]". However, if the "]" is escaped with a
backslash it is interpreted as the end of range, so [W-\]46] is inter‐
preted as a single class containing a range followed by two separate
characters. The octal or hexadecimal representation of "]" can also be
used to end a range.
Ranges operate in the collating sequence of character values. They can
also be used for characters specified numerically, for example
[\000-\037]. In UTF-8 mode, ranges can include characters whose values
are greater than 255, for example [\x{100}-\x{2ff}].
If a range that includes letters is used when caseless matching is set,
it matches the letters in either case. For example, [W-c] is equivalent
to [][\^_`wxyzabc], matched caselessly, and if character tables for the
"fr" locale are in use, [\xc8-\xcb] matches accented E characters in
both cases.
The character types \d, \D, \s, \S, \w, and \W may also appear in a
character class, and add the characters that they match to the class.
For example, [\dABCDEF] matches any hexadecimal digit. A circumflex can
conveniently be used with the upper case character types to specify a
more restricted set of characters than the matching lower case type.
For example, the class [^\W_] matches any letter or digit, but not
underscore.
All non-alphameric characters other than \, -, ^ (at the start) and the
terminating ] are non-special in character classes, but it does no harm
if they are escaped.
POSIX CHARACTER CLASSES
Perl supports the POSIX notation for character classes, which uses
names enclosed by [: and :] within the enclosing square brackets. PCRE
also supports this notation. For example,
[01[:alpha:]%]
matches "0", "1", any alphabetic character, or "%". The supported class
names are
alnum letters and digits
alpha letters
ascii character codes 0 - 127
blank space or tab only
cntrl control characters
digit decimal digits (same as \d)
graph printing characters, excluding space
lower lower case letters
print printing characters, including space
punct printing characters, excluding letters and digits
space white space (not quite the same as \s)
upper upper case letters
word "word" characters (same as \w)
xdigit hexadecimal digits
The "space" characters are HT (9), LF (10), VT (11), FF (12), CR (13),
and space (32). Notice that this list includes the VT character (code
11). This makes "space" different to \s, which does not include VT (for
Perl compatibility).
The name "word" is a Perl extension, and "blank" is a GNU extension
from Perl 5.8. Another Perl extension is negation, which is indicated
by a ^ character after the colon. For example,
[12[:^digit:]]
matches "1", "2", or any non-digit. PCRE (and Perl) also recognize the
POSIX syntax [.ch.] and [=ch=] where "ch" is a "collating element", but
these are not supported, and an error is given if they are encountered.
In UTF-8 mode, characters with values greater than 255 do not match any
of the POSIX character classes.
VERTICAL BAR
Vertical bar characters are used to separate alternative patterns. For
example, the pattern
gilbert|sullivan
matches either "gilbert" or "sullivan". Any number of alternatives may
appear, and an empty alternative is permitted (matching the empty
string). The matching process tries each alternative in turn, from
left to right, and the first one that succeeds is used. If the alterna‐
tives are within a subpattern (defined below), "succeeds" means match‐
ing the rest of the main pattern as well as the alternative in the sub‐
pattern.
INTERNAL OPTION SETTING
The settings of the PCRE_CASELESS, PCRE_MULTILINE, PCRE_DOTALL, and
PCRE_EXTENDED options can be changed from within the pattern by a
sequence of Perl option letters enclosed between "(?" and ")". The
option letters are
i for PCRE_CASELESS
m for PCRE_MULTILINE
s for PCRE_DOTALL
x for PCRE_EXTENDED
For example, (?im) sets caseless, multiline matching. It is also possi‐
ble to unset these options by preceding the letter with a hyphen, and a
combined setting and unsetting such as (?im-sx), which sets PCRE_CASE‐
LESS and PCRE_MULTILINE while unsetting PCRE_DOTALL and PCRE_EXTENDED,
is also permitted. If a letter appears both before and after the
hyphen, the option is unset.
When an option change occurs at top level (that is, not inside subpat‐
tern parentheses), the change applies to the remainder of the pattern
that follows. If the change is placed right at the start of a pattern,
PCRE extracts it into the global options (and it will therefore show up
in data extracted by the pcre_fullinfo() function).
An option change within a subpattern affects only that part of the cur‐
rent pattern that follows it, so
(a(?i)b)c
matches abc and aBc and no other strings (assuming PCRE_CASELESS is not
used). By this means, options can be made to have different settings
in different parts of the pattern. Any changes made in one alternative
do carry on into subsequent branches within the same subpattern. For
example,
(a(?i)b|c)
matches "ab", "aB", "c", and "C", even though when matching "C" the
first branch is abandoned before the option setting. This is because
the effects of option settings happen at compile time. There would be
some very weird behaviour otherwise.
The PCRE-specific options PCRE_UNGREEDY and PCRE_EXTRA can be changed
in the same way as the Perl-compatible options by using the characters
U and X respectively. The (?X) flag setting is special in that it must
always occur earlier in the pattern than any of the additional features
it turns on, even when it is at top level. It is best put at the start.
SUBPATTERNS
Subpatterns are delimited by parentheses (round brackets), which can be
nested. Marking part of a pattern as a subpattern does two things:
1. It localizes a set of alternatives. For example, the pattern
cat(aract|erpillar|)
matches one of the words "cat", "cataract", or "caterpillar". Without
the parentheses, it would match "cataract", "erpillar" or the empty
string.
2. It sets up the subpattern as a capturing subpattern (as defined
above). When the whole pattern matches, that portion of the subject
string that matched the subpattern is passed back to the caller via the
ovector argument of pcre_exec(). Opening parentheses are counted from
left to right (starting from 1) to obtain the numbers of the capturing
subpatterns.
For example, if the string "the red king" is matched against the pat‐
tern
the ((red|white) (king|queen))
the captured substrings are "red king", "red", and "king", and are num‐
bered 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
The fact that plain parentheses fulfil two functions is not always
helpful. There are often times when a grouping subpattern is required
without a capturing requirement. If an opening parenthesis is followed
by a question mark and a colon, the subpattern does not do any captur‐
ing, and is not counted when computing the number of any subsequent
capturing subpatterns. For example, if the string "the white queen" is
matched against the pattern
the ((?:red|white) (king|queen))
the captured substrings are "white queen" and "queen", and are numbered
1 and 2. The maximum number of capturing subpatterns is 65535, and the
maximum depth of nesting of all subpatterns, both capturing and non-
capturing, is 200.
As a convenient shorthand, if any option settings are required at the
start of a non-capturing subpattern, the option letters may appear
between the "?" and the ":". Thus the two patterns
(?i:saturday|sunday)
(?:(?i)saturday|sunday)
match exactly the same set of strings. Because alternative branches are
tried from left to right, and options are not reset until the end of
the subpattern is reached, an option setting in one branch does affect
subsequent branches, so the above patterns match "SUNDAY" as well as
"Saturday".
NAMED SUBPATTERNS
Identifying capturing parentheses by number is simple, but it can be
very hard to keep track of the numbers in complicated regular expres‐
sions. Furthermore, if an expression is modified, the numbers may
change. To help with the difficulty, PCRE supports the naming of sub‐
patterns, something that Perl does not provide. The Python syntax
(?P<name>...) is used. Names consist of alphanumeric characters and
underscores, and must be unique within a pattern.
Named capturing parentheses are still allocated numbers as well as
names. The PCRE API provides function calls for extracting the name-to-
number translation table from a compiled pattern. For further details
see the pcreapi documentation.
REPETITION
Repetition is specified by quantifiers, which can follow any of the
following items:
a literal data character
the . metacharacter
the \C escape sequence
escapes such as \d that match single characters
a character class
a back reference (see next section)
a parenthesized subpattern (unless it is an assertion)
The general repetition quantifier specifies a minimum and maximum num‐
ber of permitted matches, by giving the two numbers in curly brackets
(braces), separated by a comma. The numbers must be less than 65536,
and the first must be less than or equal to the second. For example:
z{2,4}
matches "zz", "zzz", or "zzzz". A closing brace on its own is not a
special character. If the second number is omitted, but the comma is
present, there is no upper limit; if the second number and the comma
are both omitted, the quantifier specifies an exact number of required
matches. Thus
[aeiou]{3,}
matches at least 3 successive vowels, but may match many more, while
\d{8}
matches exactly 8 digits. An opening curly bracket that appears in a
position where a quantifier is not allowed, or one that does not match
the syntax of a quantifier, is taken as a literal character. For exam‐
ple, {,6} is not a quantifier, but a literal string of four characters.
In UTF-8 mode, quantifiers apply to UTF-8 characters rather than to
individual bytes. Thus, for example, \x{100}{2} matches two UTF-8 char‐
acters, each of which is represented by a two-byte sequence.
The quantifier {0} is permitted, causing the expression to behave as if
the previous item and the quantifier were not present.
For convenience (and historical compatibility) the three most common
quantifiers have single-character abbreviations:
* is equivalent to {0,}
+ is equivalent to {1,}
? is equivalent to {0,1}
It is possible to construct infinite loops by following a subpattern
that can match no characters with a quantifier that has no upper limit,
for example:
(a?)*
Earlier versions of Perl and PCRE used to give an error at compile time
for such patterns. However, because there are cases where this can be
useful, such patterns are now accepted, but if any repetition of the
subpattern does in fact match no characters, the loop is forcibly bro‐
ken.
By default, the quantifiers are "greedy", that is, they match as much
as possible (up to the maximum number of permitted times), without
causing the rest of the pattern to fail. The classic example of where
this gives problems is in trying to match comments in C programs. These
appear between the sequences /* and */ and within the sequence, indi‐
vidual * and / characters may appear. An attempt to match C comments by
applying the pattern
/\*.*\*/
to the string
/* first command */ not comment /* second comment */
fails, because it matches the entire string owing to the greediness of
the .* item.
However, if a quantifier is followed by a question mark, it ceases to
be greedy, and instead matches the minimum number of times possible, so
the pattern
/\*.*?\*/
does the right thing with the C comments. The meaning of the various
quantifiers is not otherwise changed, just the preferred number of
matches. Do not confuse this use of question mark with its use as a
quantifier in its own right. Because it has two uses, it can sometimes
appear doubled, as in
\d??\d
which matches one digit by preference, but can match two if that is the
only way the rest of the pattern matches.
If the PCRE_UNGREEDY option is set (an option which is not available in
Perl), the quantifiers are not greedy by default, but individual ones
can be made greedy by following them with a question mark. In other
words, it inverts the default behaviour.
When a parenthesized subpattern is quantified with a minimum repeat
count that is greater than 1 or with a limited maximum, more store is
required for the compiled pattern, in proportion to the size of the
minimum or maximum.
If a pattern starts with .* or .{0,} and the PCRE_DOTALL option (equiv‐
alent to Perl's /s) is set, thus allowing the . to match newlines, the
pattern is implicitly anchored, because whatever follows will be tried
against every character position in the subject string, so there is no
point in retrying the overall match at any position after the first.
PCRE normally treats such a pattern as though it were preceded by \A.
In cases where it is known that the subject string contains no new‐
lines, it is worth setting PCRE_DOTALL in order to obtain this opti‐
mization, or alternatively using ^ to indicate anchoring explicitly.
However, there is one situation where the optimization cannot be used.
When .* is inside capturing parentheses that are the subject of a
backreference elsewhere in the pattern, a match at the start may fail,
and a later one succeed. Consider, for example:
(.*)abc\1
If the subject is "xyz123abc123" the match point is the fourth charac‐
ter. For this reason, such a pattern is not implicitly anchored.
When a capturing subpattern is repeated, the value captured is the sub‐
string that matched the final iteration. For example, after
(tweedle[dume]{3}\s*)+
has matched "tweedledum tweedledee" the value of the captured substring
is "tweedledee". However, if there are nested capturing subpatterns,
the corresponding captured values may have been set in previous itera‐
tions. For example, after
/(a|(b))+/
matches "aba" the value of the second captured substring is "b".
ATOMIC GROUPING AND POSSESSIVE QUANTIFIERS
With both maximizing and minimizing repetition, failure of what follows
normally causes the repeated item to be re-evaluated to see if a dif‐
ferent number of repeats allows the rest of the pattern to match. Some‐
times it is useful to prevent this, either to change the nature of the
match, or to cause it fail earlier than it otherwise might, when the
author of the pattern knows there is no point in carrying on.
Consider, for example, the pattern \d+foo when applied to the subject
line
123456bar
After matching all 6 digits and then failing to match "foo", the normal
action of the matcher is to try again with only 5 digits matching the
\d+ item, and then with 4, and so on, before ultimately failing.
"Atomic grouping" (a term taken from Jeffrey Friedl's book) provides
the means for specifying that once a subpattern has matched, it is not
to be re-evaluated in this way.
If we use atomic grouping for the previous example, the matcher would
give up immediately on failing to match "foo" the first time. The nota‐
tion is a kind of special parenthesis, starting with (?> as in this
example:
(?>\d+)foo
This kind of parenthesis "locks up" the part of the pattern it con‐
tains once it has matched, and a failure further into the pattern is
prevented from backtracking into it. Backtracking past it to previous
items, however, works as normal.
An alternative description is that a subpattern of this type matches
the string of characters that an identical standalone pattern would
match, if anchored at the current point in the subject string.
Atomic grouping subpatterns are not capturing subpatterns. Simple cases
such as the above example can be thought of as a maximizing repeat that
must swallow everything it can. So, while both \d+ and \d+? are pre‐
pared to adjust the number of digits they match in order to make the
rest of the pattern match, (?>\d+) can only match an entire sequence of
digits.
Atomic groups in general can of course contain arbitrarily complicated
subpatterns, and can be nested. However, when the subpattern for an
atomic group is just a single repeated item, as in the example above, a
simpler notation, called a "possessive quantifier" can be used. This
consists of an additional + character following a quantifier. Using
this notation, the previous example can be rewritten as
\d++bar
Possessive quantifiers are always greedy; the setting of the
PCRE_UNGREEDY option is ignored. They are a convenient notation for the
simpler forms of atomic group. However, there is no difference in the
meaning or processing of a possessive quantifier and the equivalent
atomic group.
The possessive quantifier syntax is an extension to the Perl syntax. It
originates in Sun's Java package.
When a pattern contains an unlimited repeat inside a subpattern that
can itself be repeated an unlimited number of times, the use of an
atomic group is the only way to avoid some failing matches taking a
very long time indeed. The pattern
(\D+|<\d+>)*[!?]
matches an unlimited number of substrings that either consist of non-
digits, or digits enclosed in <>, followed by either ! or ?. When it
matches, it runs quickly. However, if it is applied to
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
it takes a long time before reporting failure. This is because the
string can be divided between the two repeats in a large number of
ways, and all have to be tried. (The example used [!?] rather than a
single character at the end, because both PCRE and Perl have an opti‐
mization that allows for fast failure when a single character is used.
They remember the last single character that is required for a match,
and fail early if it is not present in the string.) If the pattern is
changed to
((?>\D+)|<\d+>)*[!?]
sequences of non-digits cannot be broken, and failure happens quickly.
BACK REFERENCES
Outside a character class, a backslash followed by a digit greater than
0 (and possibly further digits) is a back reference to a capturing sub‐
pattern earlier (that is, to its left) in the pattern, provided there
have been that many previous capturing left parentheses.
However, if the decimal number following the backslash is less than 10,
it is always taken as a back reference, and causes an error only if
there are not that many capturing left parentheses in the entire pat‐
tern. In other words, the parentheses that are referenced need not be
to the left of the reference for numbers less than 10. See the section
entitled "Backslash" above for further details of the handling of dig‐
its following a backslash.
A back reference matches whatever actually matched the capturing sub‐
pattern in the current subject string, rather than anything matching
the subpattern itself (see "Subpatterns as subroutines" below for a way
of doing that). So the pattern
(sens|respons)e and \1ibility
matches "sense and sensibility" and "response and responsibility", but
not "sense and responsibility". If caseful matching is in force at the
time of the back reference, the case of letters is relevant. For exam‐
ple,
((?i)rah)\s+\1
matches "rah rah" and "RAH RAH", but not "RAH rah", even though the
original capturing subpattern is matched caselessly.
Back references to named subpatterns use the Python syntax (?P=name).
We could rewrite the above example as follows:
(?<p1>(?i)rah)\s+(?P=p1)
There may be more than one back reference to the same subpattern. If a
subpattern has not actually been used in a particular match, any back
references to it always fail. For example, the pattern
(a|(bc))\2
always fails if it starts to match "a" rather than "bc". Because there
may be many capturing parentheses in a pattern, all digits following
the backslash are taken as part of a potential back reference number.
If the pattern continues with a digit character, some delimiter must be
used to terminate the back reference. If the PCRE_EXTENDED option is
set, this can be whitespace. Otherwise an empty comment can be used.
A back reference that occurs inside the parentheses to which it refers
fails when the subpattern is first used, so, for example, (a\1) never
matches. However, such references can be useful inside repeated sub‐
patterns. For example, the pattern
(a|b\1)+
matches any number of "a"s and also "aba", "ababbaa" etc. At each iter‐
ation of the subpattern, the back reference matches the character
string corresponding to the previous iteration. In order for this to
work, the pattern must be such that the first iteration does not need
to match the back reference. This can be done using alternation, as in
the example above, or by a quantifier with a minimum of zero.
ASSERTIONS
An assertion is a test on the characters following or preceding the
current matching point that does not actually consume any characters.
The simple assertions coded as \b, \B, \A, \G, \Z, \z, ^ and $ are
described above. More complicated assertions are coded as subpatterns.
There are two kinds: those that look ahead of the current position in
the subject string, and those that look behind it.
An assertion subpattern is matched in the normal way, except that it
does not cause the current matching position to be changed. Lookahead
assertions start with (?= for positive assertions and (?! for negative
assertions. For example,
\w+(?=;)
matches a word followed by a semicolon, but does not include the semi‐
colon in the match, and
foo(?!bar)
matches any occurrence of "foo" that is not followed by "bar". Note
that the apparently similar pattern
(?!foo)bar
does not find an occurrence of "bar" that is preceded by something
other than "foo"; it finds any occurrence of "bar" whatsoever, because
the assertion (?!foo) is always true when the next three characters are
"bar". A lookbehind assertion is needed to achieve this effect.
If you want to force a matching failure at some point in a pattern, the
most convenient way to do it is with (?!) because an empty string
always matches, so an assertion that requires there not to be an empty
string must always fail.
Lookbehind assertions start with (?<= for positive assertions and (?<!
for negative assertions. For example,
(?<!foo)bar
does find an occurrence of "bar" that is not preceded by "foo". The
contents of a lookbehind assertion are restricted such that all the
strings it matches must have a fixed length. However, if there are sev‐
eral alternatives, they do not all have to have the same fixed length.
Thus
(?<=bullock|donkey)
is permitted, but
(?<!dogs?|cats?)
causes an error at compile time. Branches that match different length
strings are permitted only at the top level of a lookbehind assertion.
This is an extension compared with Perl (at least for 5.8), which
requires all branches to match the same length of string. An assertion
such as
(?<=ab(c|de))
is not permitted, because its single top-level branch can match two
different lengths, but it is acceptable if rewritten to use two top-
level branches:
(?<=abc|abde)
The implementation of lookbehind assertions is, for each alternative,
to temporarily move the current position back by the fixed width and
then try to match. If there are insufficient characters before the cur‐
rent position, the match is deemed to fail.
PCRE does not allow the \C escape (which matches a single byte in UTF-8
mode) to appear in lookbehind assertions, because it makes it impossi‐
ble to calculate the length of the lookbehind.
Atomic groups can be used in conjunction with lookbehind assertions to
specify efficient matching at the end of the subject string. Consider a
simple pattern such as
abcd$
when applied to a long string that does not match. Because matching
proceeds from left to right, PCRE will look for each "a" in the subject
and then see if what follows matches the rest of the pattern. If the
pattern is specified as
^.*abcd$
the initial .* matches the entire string at first, but when this fails
(because there is no following "a"), it backtracks to match all but the
last character, then all but the last two characters, and so on. Once
again the search for "a" covers the entire string, from right to left,
so we are no better off. However, if the pattern is written as
^(?>.*)(?<=abcd)
or, equivalently,
^.*+(?<=abcd)
there can be no backtracking for the .* item; it can match only the
entire string. The subsequent lookbehind assertion does a single test
on the last four characters. If it fails, the match fails immediately.
For long strings, this approach makes a significant difference to the
processing time.
Several assertions (of any sort) may occur in succession. For example,
(?<=\d{3})(?<!999)foo
matches "foo" preceded by three digits that are not "999". Notice that
each of the assertions is applied independently at the same point in
the subject string. First there is a check that the previous three
characters are all digits, and then there is a check that the same
three characters are not "999". This pattern does not match "foo" pre‐
ceded by six characters, the first of which are digits and the last
three of which are not "999". For example, it doesn't match "123abc‐
foo". A pattern to do that is
(?<=\d{3}...)(?<!999)foo
This time the first assertion looks at the preceding six characters,
checking that the first three are digits, and then the second assertion
checks that the preceding three characters are not "999".
Assertions can be nested in any combination. For example,
(?<=(?<!foo)bar)baz
matches an occurrence of "baz" that is preceded by "bar" which in turn
is not preceded by "foo", while
(?<=\d{3}(?!999)...)foo
is another pattern which matches "foo" preceded by three digits and any
three characters that are not "999".
Assertion subpatterns are not capturing subpatterns, and may not be
repeated, because it makes no sense to assert the same thing several
times. If any kind of assertion contains capturing subpatterns within
it, these are counted for the purposes of numbering the capturing sub‐
patterns in the whole pattern. However, substring capturing is carried
out only for positive assertions, because it does not make sense for
negative assertions.
CONDITIONAL SUBPATTERNS
It is possible to cause the matching process to obey a subpattern con‐
ditionally or to choose between two alternative subpatterns, depending
on the result of an assertion, or whether a previous capturing subpat‐
tern matched or not. The two possible forms of conditional subpattern
are
(?(condition)yes-pattern)
(?(condition)yes-pattern|no-pattern)
If the condition is satisfied, the yes-pattern is used; otherwise the
no-pattern (if present) is used. If there are more than two alterna‐
tives in the subpattern, a compile-time error occurs.
There are three kinds of condition. If the text between the parentheses
consists of a sequence of digits, the condition is satisfied if the
capturing subpattern of that number has previously matched. The number
must be greater than zero. Consider the following pattern, which con‐
tains non-significant white space to make it more readable (assume the
PCRE_EXTENDED option) and to divide it into three parts for ease of
discussion:
( \( )? [^()]+ (?(1) \) )
The first part matches an optional opening parenthesis, and if that
character is present, sets it as the first captured substring. The sec‐
ond part matches one or more characters that are not parentheses. The
third part is a conditional subpattern that tests whether the first set
of parentheses matched or not. If they did, that is, if subject started
with an opening parenthesis, the condition is true, and so the yes-pat‐
tern is executed and a closing parenthesis is required. Otherwise,
since no-pattern is not present, the subpattern matches nothing. In
other words, this pattern matches a sequence of non-parentheses,
optionally enclosed in parentheses.
If the condition is the string (R), it is satisfied if a recursive call
to the pattern or subpattern has been made. At "top level", the condi‐
tion is false. This is a PCRE extension. Recursive patterns are
described in the next section.
If the condition is not a sequence of digits or (R), it must be an
assertion. This may be a positive or negative lookahead or lookbehind
assertion. Consider this pattern, again containing non-significant
white space, and with the two alternatives on the second line:
(?(?=[^a-z]*[a-z])
\d{2}-[a-z]{3}-\d{2} | \d{2}-\d{2}-\d{2} )
The condition is a positive lookahead assertion that matches an
optional sequence of non-letters followed by a letter. In other words,
it tests for the presence of at least one letter in the subject. If a
letter is found, the subject is matched against the first alternative;
otherwise it is matched against the second. This pattern matches
strings in one of the two forms dd-aaa-dd or dd-dd-dd, where aaa are
letters and dd are digits.
COMMENTS
The sequence (?# marks the start of a comment which continues up to the
next closing parenthesis. Nested parentheses are not permitted. The
characters that make up a comment play no part in the pattern matching
at all.
If the PCRE_EXTENDED option is set, an unescaped # character outside a
character class introduces a comment that continues up to the next new‐
line character in the pattern.
RECURSIVE PATTERNS
Consider the problem of matching a string in parentheses, allowing for
unlimited nested parentheses. Without the use of recursion, the best
that can be done is to use a pattern that matches up to some fixed
depth of nesting. It is not possible to handle an arbitrary nesting
depth. Perl has provided an experimental facility that allows regular
expressions to recurse (amongst other things). It does this by interpo‐
lating Perl code in the expression at run time, and the code can refer
to the expression itself. A Perl pattern to solve the parentheses prob‐
lem can be created like this:
$re = qr{\( (?: (?>[^()]+) | (?p{$re}) )* \)}x;
The (?p{...}) item interpolates Perl code at run time, and in this case
refers recursively to the pattern in which it appears. Obviously, PCRE
cannot support the interpolation of Perl code. Instead, it supports
some special syntax for recursion of the entire pattern, and also for
individual subpattern recursion.
The special item that consists of (? followed by a number greater than
zero and a closing parenthesis is a recursive call of the subpattern of
the given number, provided that it occurs inside that subpattern. (If
not, it is a "subroutine" call, which is described in the next sec‐
tion.) The special item (?R) is a recursive call of the entire regular
expression.
For example, this PCRE pattern solves the nested parentheses problem
(assume the PCRE_EXTENDED option is set so that white space is
ignored):
\( ( (?>[^()]+) | (?R) )* \)
First it matches an opening parenthesis. Then it matches any number of
substrings which can either be a sequence of non-parentheses, or a
recursive match of the pattern itself (that is a correctly parenthe‐
sized substring). Finally there is a closing parenthesis.
If this were part of a larger pattern, you would not want to recurse
the entire pattern, so instead you could use this:
( \( ( (?>[^()]+) | (?1) )* \) )
We have put the pattern into parentheses, and caused the recursion to
refer to them instead of the whole pattern. In a larger pattern, keep‐
ing track of parenthesis numbers can be tricky. It may be more conve‐
nient to use named parentheses instead. For this, PCRE uses (?P>name),
which is an extension to the Python syntax that PCRE uses for named
parentheses (Perl does not provide named parentheses). We could rewrite
the above example as follows:
(?P<pn> \( ( (?>[^()]+) | (?P>pn) )* \) )
This particular example pattern contains nested unlimited repeats, and
so the use of atomic grouping for matching strings of non-parentheses
is important when applying the pattern to strings that do not match.
For example, when this pattern is applied to
(aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa()
it yields "no match" quickly. However, if atomic grouping is not used,
the match runs for a very long time indeed because there are so many
different ways the + and * repeats can carve up the subject, and all
have to be tested before failure can be reported.
At the end of a match, the values set for any capturing subpatterns are
those from the outermost level of the recursion at which the subpattern
value is set. If you want to obtain intermediate values, a callout
function can be used (see below and the pcrecallout documentation). If
the pattern above is matched against
(ab(cd)ef)
the value for the capturing parentheses is "ef", which is the last
value taken on at the top level. If additional parentheses are added,
giving
\( ( ( (?>[^()]+) | (?R) )* ) \)
^ ^
^ ^
the string they capture is "ab(cd)ef", the contents of the top level
parentheses. If there are more than 15 capturing parentheses in a pat‐
tern, PCRE has to obtain extra memory to store data during a recursion,
which it does by using pcre_malloc, freeing it via pcre_free after‐
wards. If no memory can be obtained, the match fails with the
PCRE_ERROR_NOMEMORY error.
Do not confuse the (?R) item with the condition (R), which tests for
recursion. Consider this pattern, which matches text in angle brack‐
ets, allowing for arbitrary nesting. Only digits are allowed in nested
brackets (that is, when recursing), whereas any characters are permit‐
ted at the outer level.
< (?: (?(R) \d++ | [^<>]*+) | (?R)) * >
In this pattern, (?(R) is the start of a conditional subpattern, with
two different alternatives for the recursive and non-recursive cases.
The (?R) item is the actual recursive call.
SUBPATTERNS AS SUBROUTINES
If the syntax for a recursive subpattern reference (either by number or
by name) is used outside the parentheses to which it refers, it oper‐
ates like a subroutine in a programming language. An earlier example
pointed out that the pattern
(sens|respons)e and \1ibility
matches "sense and sensibility" and "response and responsibility", but
not "sense and responsibility". If instead the pattern
(sens|respons)e and (?1)ibility
is used, it does match "sense and responsibility" as well as the other
two strings. Such references must, however, follow the subpattern to
which they refer.
CALLOUTS
Perl has a feature whereby using the sequence (?{...}) causes arbitrary
Perl code to be obeyed in the middle of matching a regular expression.
This makes it possible, amongst other things, to extract different sub‐
strings that match the same pair of parentheses when there is a repeti‐
tion.
PCRE provides a similar feature, but of course it cannot obey arbitrary
Perl code. The feature is called "callout". The caller of PCRE provides
an external function by putting its entry point in the global variable
pcre_callout. By default, this variable contains NULL, which disables
all calling out.
Within a regular expression, (?C) indicates the points at which the
external function is to be called. If you want to identify different
callout points, you can put a number less than 256 after the letter C.
The default value is zero. For example, this pattern has two callout
points:
(?C1)abc(?C2)def
During matching, when PCRE reaches a callout point (and pcre_callout is
set), the external function is called. It is provided with the number
of the callout, and, optionally, one item of data originally supplied
by the caller of pcre_exec(). The callout function may cause matching
to backtrack, or to fail altogether. A complete description of the
interface to the callout function is given in the pcrecallout documen‐
tation.
Last updated: 03 February 2003Copyright (c) 1997-2003 University of Cambridge.
PCRE(3)
