pcreposix man page on Aros

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PCRE(3)								       PCRE(3)

NAME
       PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions.

SYNOPSIS OF POSIX API
       #include <pcreposix.h>

       int regcomp(regex_t *preg, const char *pattern,
	    int cflags);

       int regexec(regex_t *preg, const char *string,
	    size_t nmatch, regmatch_t pmatch[], int eflags);

       size_t regerror(int errcode, const regex_t *preg,
	    char *errbuf, size_t errbuf_size);

       void regfree(regex_t *preg);

DESCRIPTION

       This  set  of  functions provides a POSIX-style API to the PCRE regular
       expression package. See the pcreapi documentation for a description  of
       the native API, which contains additional functionality.

       The functions described here are just wrapper functions that ultimately
       call  the  PCRE	native	API.  Their  prototypes	 are  defined  in  the
       pcreposix.h  header  file,  and	on  Unix systems the library itself is
       called pcreposix.a, so can be accessed by  adding  -lpcreposix  to  the
       command	for  linking an application which uses them. Because the POSIX
       functions call the native ones, it is also necessary to add -lpcre.

       I have implemented only those option bits that can be reasonably mapped
       to  PCRE	 native	 options.  In  addition,  the options REG_EXTENDED and
       REG_NOSUB are defined with the value zero. They	have  no  effect,  but
       since  programs that are written to the POSIX interface often use them,
       this makes it easier to slot in PCRE as a  replacement  library.	 Other
       POSIX options are not even defined.

       When  PCRE  is  called  via these functions, it is only the API that is
       POSIX-like in style. The syntax and semantics of	 the  regular  expres‐
       sions  themselves  are  still  those of Perl, subject to the setting of
       various PCRE options, as described below. "POSIX-like in	 style"	 means
       that  the  API  approximates  to	 the POSIX definition; it is not fully
       POSIX-compatible, and in multi-byte encoding  domains  it  is  probably
       even less compatible.

       The  header for these functions is supplied as pcreposix.h to avoid any
       potential clash with other POSIX	 libraries.  It	 can,  of  course,  be
       renamed or aliased as regex.h, which is the "correct" name. It provides
       two structure types, regex_t for	 compiled  internal  forms,  and  reg‐
       match_t	for  returning	captured substrings. It also defines some con‐
       stants whose names start	 with  "REG_";	these  are  used  for  setting
       options and identifying error codes.

COMPILING A PATTERN

       The  function regcomp() is called to compile a pattern into an internal
       form. The pattern is a C string terminated by a	binary	zero,  and  is
       passed  in  the	argument  pattern. The preg argument is a pointer to a
       regex_t structure which is used as a base for storing information about
       the compiled expression.

       The argument cflags is either zero, or contains one or more of the bits
       defined by the following macros:

	 REG_ICASE

       The PCRE_CASELESS option is set when the expression is passed for  com‐
       pilation to the native function.

	 REG_NEWLINE

       The PCRE_MULTILINE option is set when the expression is passed for com‐
       pilation to the native function. Note that  this	 does  not  mimic  the
       defined POSIX behaviour for REG_NEWLINE (see the following section).

       In  the	absence	 of  these  flags, no options are passed to the native
       function.  This means the the  regex  is	 compiled  with	 PCRE  default
       semantics.  In particular, the way it handles newline characters in the
       subject string is the Perl way, not the POSIX way.  Note	 that  setting
       PCRE_MULTILINE  has only some of the effects specified for REG_NEWLINE.
       It does not affect the way newlines are matched by . (they  aren't)  or
       by a negative class such as [^a] (they are).

       The  yield of regcomp() is zero on success, and non-zero otherwise. The
       preg structure is filled in on success, and one member of the structure
       is  public: re_nsub contains the number of capturing subpatterns in the
       regular expression. Various error codes are defined in the header file.

MATCHING NEWLINE CHARACTERS

       This area is not simple, because POSIX and Perl take different views of
       things.	 It  is	 not possible to get PCRE to obey POSIX semantics, but
       then PCRE was never intended to be a POSIX engine. The following	 table
       lists  the  different  possibilities for matching newline characters in
       PCRE:

				 Default   Change with

	 . matches newline	    no	   PCRE_DOTALL
	 newline matches [^a]	    yes	   not changeable
	 $ matches \n at end	    yes	   PCRE_DOLLARENDONLY
	 $ matches \n in middle	    no	   PCRE_MULTILINE
	 ^ matches \n in middle	    no	   PCRE_MULTILINE

       This is the equivalent table for POSIX:

				 Default   Change with

	 . matches newline	    yes	     REG_NEWLINE
	 newline matches [^a]	    yes	     REG_NEWLINE
	 $ matches \n at end	    no	     REG_NEWLINE
	 $ matches \n in middle	    no	     REG_NEWLINE
	 ^ matches \n in middle	    no	     REG_NEWLINE

       PCRE's behaviour is the same as Perl's, except that there is no equiva‐
       lent for PCRE_DOLLARENDONLY in Perl. In both PCRE and Perl, there is no
       way to stop newline from matching [^a].

       The  default  POSIX  newline  handling  can  be	obtained  by   setting
       PCRE_DOTALL  and	 PCRE_DOLLARENDONLY,  but there is no way to make PCRE
       behave exactly as for the REG_NEWLINE action.

MATCHING A PATTERN

       The function regexec() is called to match a pre-compiled	 pattern  preg
       against	a given string, which is terminated by a zero byte, subject to
       the options in eflags. These can be:

	 REG_NOTBOL

       The PCRE_NOTBOL option is set when calling the underlying PCRE matching
       function.

	 REG_NOTEOL

       The PCRE_NOTEOL option is set when calling the underlying PCRE matching
       function.

       The portion of the string that was matched, and also any captured  sub‐
       strings, are returned via the pmatch argument, which points to an array
       of nmatch structures of type regmatch_t, containing the	members	 rm_so
       and rm_eo. These contain the offset to the first character of each sub‐
       string and the offset to the first character after the end of each sub‐
       string,	respectively.  The  0th	 element  of the vector relates to the
       entire portion of string that was matched; subsequent  elements	relate
       to  the capturing subpatterns of the regular expression. Unused entries
       in the array have both structure members set to -1.

       A successful match yields  a  zero  return;  various  error  codes  are
       defined	in  the	 header	 file,	of which REG_NOMATCH is the "expected"
       failure code.

ERROR MESSAGES

       The regerror() function maps a non-zero errorcode from either regcomp()
       or  regexec()  to  a  printable message. If preg is not NULL, the error
       should have arisen from the use of that structure. A message terminated
       by  a  binary  zero  is	placed	in  errbuf. The length of the message,
       including the zero, is limited to errbuf_size. The yield of  the	 func‐
       tion is the size of buffer needed to hold the whole message.

STORAGE

       Compiling  a regular expression causes memory to be allocated and asso‐
       ciated with the preg structure. The function regfree() frees  all  such
       memory,	after  which  preg may no longer be used as a compiled expres‐
       sion.

AUTHOR

       Philip Hazel <ph10@cam.ac.uk>
       University Computing Service,
       Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.

Last updated: 03 February 2003
Copyright (c) 1997-2003 University of Cambridge.

								       PCRE(3)
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