PCRE_EXEC(3)

NAME

PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions

SYNOPSIS

#include <pcre.h>

int pcre_exec(const pcre *code, const pcre_extra *extra,
     const char *subject, int length, int startoffset,
     int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize);

DESCRIPTION

This function matches a compiled regular expression against a given subject string, using a matching algorithm that is similar to Perl's. It returns offsets to captured substrings. Its arguments are:

code Points to the compiled pattern
extra Points to an associated pcre_extra structure,

or is NULL

subject Points to the subject string
length Length of the subject string, in bytes
startoffset Offset in bytes in the subject at which to

start matching

options Option bits
ovector Points to a vector of ints for result offsets ovecsize Number of elements in the vector (a multiple of 3)

The options are:

PCRE_ANCHORED Match only at the first position
PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF \R matches only CR, LF, or CRLF
PCRE_BSR_UNICODE \R matches all Unicode line endings
PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY Recognize any Unicode newline sequence
PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF Recognize CR, LF, & CRLF as newline sequences PCRE_NEWLINE_CR Recognize CR as the only newline sequence
PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF Recognize CRLF as the only newline sequence
PCRE_NEWLINE_LF Recognize LF as the only newline sequence
PCRE_NOTBOL Subject string is not the beginning of a line PCRE_NOTEOL Subject string is not the end of a line
PCRE_NOTEMPTY An empty string is not a valid match
PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART An empty string at the start of the subject

is not a valid match

PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE Do not do "start-match" optimizations
PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK Do not check the subject for UTF-8

validity (only relevant if PCRE_UTF8
was set at compile time)

PCRE_PARTIAL ) Return PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL for a partial
PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT ) match if no full matches are found
PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD Return PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL for a partial match

even if there is a full match as well

For details of partial matching, see the pcrepartial page. A pcre_extra structure contains the following fields:

flags Bits indicating which fields are set
study_data Opaque data from pcre_study() match_limit Limit on internal resource use
match_limit_recursion Limit on internal recursion depth callout_data Opaque data passed back to callouts tables Points to character tables or is NULL

The flag bits are PCRE_EXTRA_STUDY_DATA, PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT, PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION, PCRE_EXTRA_CALLOUT_DATA, and PCRE_EXTRA_TABLES.

There is a complete description of the PCRE native API in the pcreapi page and a description of the POSIX API in the pcreposix page.

PCRE_EXEC(3)