Perl-compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE)

The HTML documentation for PCRE consists of a number of pages that are listed below in alphabetical order. If you are new to PCRE, please read the first one first.

pcre Introductory page

pcre-config Information about the installation configuration

pcre16 Discussion of the 16-bit PCRE library

pcre32 Discussion of the 32-bit PCRE library

pcreapi PCRE's native API

pcrebuild Building PCRE

pcrecallout The callout facility

pcrecompat Compability with Perl

pcrecpp The C++ wrapper for the PCRE library

pcredemo A demonstration C program that uses the PCRE library

pcregrep The pcregrep command

pcrejit Discussion of the just-in-time optimization support

pcrelimits Details of size and other limits

pcrematching Discussion of the two matching algorithms

pcrepartial Using PCRE for partial matching

pcrepattern Specification of the regular expressions supported by PCRE

pcreperform Some comments on performance

pcreposix The POSIX API to the PCRE 8-bit library

pcreprecompile How to save and re-use compiled patterns

pcresample Discussion of the pcredemo program

pcrestack Discussion of PCRE's stack usage

pcresyntax Syntax quick-reference summary

pcretest The pcretest command for testing PCRE

pcreunicode Discussion of Unicode and UTF-8/UTF-16/UTF-32 support

There are also individual pages that summarize the interface for each function in the library. There is a single page for each triple of 8-bit/16-bit/32-bit functions.

pcre_assign_jit_stack Assign stack for JIT matching

pcre_compile Compile a regular expression

pcre_compile2 Compile a regular expression (alternate interface)

pcre_config Show build-time configuration options

pcre_copy_named_substring Extract named substring into given buffer

pcre_copy_substring Extract numbered substring into given buffer

pcre_dfa_exec Match a compiled pattern to a subject string (DFA algorithm; not Perl compatible)

pcre_exec Match a compiled pattern to a subject string (Perl compatible)

pcre_free_study Free study data

pcre_free_substring Free extracted substring

pcre_free_substring_list Free list of extracted substrings

pcre_fullinfo Extract information about a pattern

pcre_get_named_substring Extract named substring into new memory

pcre_get_stringnumber Convert captured string name to number

pcre_get_stringtable_entries Find table entries for given string name

pcre_get_substring Extract numbered substring into new memory

pcre_get_substring_list Extract all substrings into new memory

pcre_jit_exec Fast path interface to JIT matching

pcre_jit_stack_alloc Create a stack for JIT matching

pcre_jit_stack_free Free a JIT matching stack

pcre_maketables Build character tables in current locale

pcre_pattern_to_host_byte_order Convert compiled pattern to host byte order if necessary

pcre_refcount Maintain reference count in compiled pattern

pcre_study Study a compiled pattern

pcre_utf16_to_host_byte_order Convert UTF-16 string to host byte order if necessary

pcre_utf32_to_host_byte_order Convert UTF-32 string to host byte order if necessary

pcre_version Return PCRE version and release date