Update Doku aus Driversourcen
Change-Id: I455f0813b970151089b3dc1b8d9407eea323cdd1
diff --git a/doc/concepts/pcre b/doc/concepts/pcre
index f863ffd..4c4cc02 100644
--- a/doc/concepts/pcre
+++ b/doc/concepts/pcre
@@ -1,58 +1,54 @@
SYNOPSIS
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
-
DESCRIPTION
- This document describes the regular expressions supported by the
- PCRE package. When the package is compiled into the driver, the
- macro __PCRE__ is defined.
+ This document describes the regular expressions supported by the PCRE
+ package. When the package is compiled into the driver, the macro
+ __PCRE__ is defined.
- Most of this manpage is lifted directly from the original PCRE
- manpage (dated January 2003).
+ Most of this manpage is lifted directly from the original PCRE manpage
+ (dated January 2003).
- The PCRE library is a set of functions that implement regular
- expression pattern matching using the same syntax and semantics
- as Perl 5, with just a few differences (see below). The
- current implementation corresponds to Perl 5.005, with some
- additional features from later versions. This includes some
- experimental, incomplete support for UTF-8 encoded strings.
- Details of exactly what is and what is not supported are given
- below.
-
+ The PCRE library is a set of functions that implement regular
+ expression pattern matching using the same syntax and semantics as
+ Perl 5, with just a few differences (see below). The current
+ implementation corresponds to Perl 5.005, with some additional features
+ from later versions. This includes some experimental, incomplete
+ support for UTF-8 encoded strings. Details of exactly what is and what
+ is not supported are given below.
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
+ copious examples. Jeffrey Friedl's "Mastering Regular Expressions",
+ published by O'Reilly, covers them in great detail. The description
+ here is intended as reference documentation.
- 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
+ mentioned in several places below. There is also a summary of UTF-8
+ features in the section on UTF-8 support in the main pcre page.
- 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
+ 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.
+ matches a portion of a subject string that is identical to itself. The
+ power of regular expressions comes from the ability to include
+ alternatives 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:
+ There are two different sets of meta-characters: those that are
+ recognized 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)
@@ -70,8 +66,8 @@
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:
+ 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
@@ -80,34 +76,32 @@
syntax)
] terminates the character class
- The following sections describe the use of each of the meta-characters.
-
+ 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.
- 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 \\.
- 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 #
+ character as part of the pattern.
- 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:
+ If you want to remove the special meaning from a sequence of
+ characters, you can do so by putting them between \Q and \E. This is
+ different from Perl in that $ and @ are handled as literals in \Q...\E
+ sequences in PCRE, whereas in Perl, $ and @ cause variable
+ interpolation. Note the following examples:
Pattern PCRE matches Perl matches
@@ -116,15 +110,15 @@
\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.
+ 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 second use of backslash provides a way of encoding non-printing
+ characters 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
@@ -137,45 +131,45 @@
\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.
+ 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 hex-
- adecimal escape, with no following digits, giving a byte whose value is
- zero.
+ 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}.
+ 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.
+ 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.
+ The handling of a backslash followed by a digit other than 0 is
+ complicated. Outside a character class, PCRE reads it and any following
+ digits 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:
+ 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
+ single 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
@@ -192,16 +186,16 @@
\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.
+ 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).
+ 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:
+ The third use of backslash is for specifying generic character types:
\d any decimal digit
\D any character that is not a decimal digit
@@ -210,35 +204,35 @@
\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.
+ 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.
+ 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).
+ 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.
+ 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
+ definition 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.
+ These character type sequences can appear both inside and outside
+ character 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
+ The fourth use of backslash is for certain simple assertions. An
+ assertion 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
@@ -247,205 +241,196 @@
\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).
+ These assertions may not appear in character classes (but note that \b
+ has a different meaning, namely the backspace character, inside a
+ character 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.
+ 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.
+ 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.
+ They are not affected by the PCRE_NOTBOL or PCRE_NOTEOL options. If the
+ startoffset argument of pcre_exec() is non-zero, indicating that
+ matching 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.
+ 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
+ arguments, you can mimic Perl's /g option, and it is in this kind of
+ implementation 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.
+ 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.
-
+ 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
+ argument 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).
- 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
+ subject, it is said to be an "anchored" pattern. (There are also other
+ constructs that can cause a pattern to be anchored.)
- 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.
- 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 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
+ immediately after and immediately before an internal newline character,
+ respectively, in addition to matching at the start and end of the
+ subject string. For example, the pattern /^abc$/ matches the subject
+ string "def\nabc" in multiline mode, but not otherwise. Consequently,
+ patterns that are anchored in single line mode because all branches
+ start with ^ are not anchored in multiline mode, and a match for
+ circumflex is possible when the startoffset argument of pcre_exec() is
+ non-zero. The PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY option is ignored if PCRE_MULTILINE
+ is set.
- The meanings of the circumflex and dollar characters are changed if the
- PCRE_MULTILINE option is set. When this is the case, they match immedi-
- ately after and immediately before an internal newline character,
- respectively, in addition to matching at the start and end of the sub-
- ject string. For example, the pattern /^abc$/ 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.
-
+ 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.
-
+ Outside a character class, a dot in the pattern matches any one
+ character 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
+ newline. If the PCRE_DOTALL option is set, dots match newlines as well.
+ The handling of dot is entirely independent of the handling of
+ circumflex 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
+ newline. The feature is provided in Perl in order to match individual
+ bytes in UTF-8 mode. Because it breaks up UTF-8 characters into
+ individual bytes, what remains in the string may be a malformed UTF-8
+ string. For this reason it is best avoided.
- 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.
-
+ 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
+ special. 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 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
+ characters 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.
- 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
+ character 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 interpreted 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.
- 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}].
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
-
+ 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,
+ 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
+ matches "0", "1", any alphabetic character, or "%". The supported class
+ names are
alnum letters and digits
alpha letters
@@ -462,168 +447,158 @@
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 "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,
+ 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.
+ 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.
-
+ 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
+ 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.
-
+ 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
+ alternatives are within a subpattern (defined below), "succeeds" means
+ matching the rest of the main pattern as well as the alternative in the
+ subpattern.
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
+ 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.
+ For example, (?im) sets caseless, multiline matching. It is also
+ possible to unset these options by preceding the letter with a hyphen,
+ and a combined setting and unsetting such as (?im-sx), which sets
+ PCRE_CASELESS 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).
+ When an option change occurs at top level (that is, not inside
+ subpattern 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
+ An option change within a subpattern affects only that part of the
+ current 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,
+ 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.
+ 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.
-
+ 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:
- 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
+ 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.
+ 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.
+ 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
+ For example, if the string "the red king" is matched against the
+ pattern
the ((red|white) (king|queen))
- the captured substrings are "red king", "red", and "king", and are num-
- bered 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
+ the captured substrings are "red king", "red", and "king", and are
+ numbered 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 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
+ capturing, 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.
+ 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
+ noncapturing, 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
+ 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".
-
+ 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
+ expressions. Furthermore, if an expression is modified, the numbers may
+ change. To help with the difficulty, PCRE supports the naming of
+ subpatterns, 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.
- 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.
-
+ 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:
+ Repetition is specified by quantifiers, which can follow any of the
+ following items:
a literal data character
the . metacharacter
@@ -633,693 +608,681 @@
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:
+ The general repetition quantifier specifies a minimum and maximum
+ number 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
+ 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
+ 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.
+ 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
+ example, {,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.
+ 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
+ characters, 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.
+ 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:
+ 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:
+ 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.
+ 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
+ broken.
- 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
+ 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,
+ individual * and / characters may appear. An attempt to match C
+ comments by applying the pattern
/\*.*\*/
- to the string
+ to the string
- /* first command */ not comment /* second comment */
+ /* first command */ not comment /* second comment */
- fails, because it matches the entire string owing to the greediness of
- the .* item.
+ 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
+ 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
+ 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.
+ 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.
+ 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.
+ 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.
+ If a pattern starts with .* or .{0,} and the PCRE_DOTALL option
+ (equivalent 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.
+ In cases where it is known that the subject string contains no
+ newlines, it is worth setting PCRE_DOTALL in order to obtain this
+ optimization, 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:
+ 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.
+ If the subject is "xyz123abc123" the match point is the fourth
+ character. 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
+ When a capturing subpattern is repeated, the value captured is the
+ substring 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
+ 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
+ iterations. For example, after
/(a|(b))+/
- matches "aba" the value of the second captured substring is "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
+ different number of repeats allows the rest of the pattern to match.
+ Sometimes 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.
- 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
+ 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.
+ 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:
+ If we use atomic grouping for the previous example, the matcher would
+ give up immediately on failing to match "foo" the first time. The
+ notation 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.
+ This kind of parenthesis "locks up" the part of the pattern it
+ contains 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.
+ 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 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
+ prepared 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
+ 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.
+ 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.
+ 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
+ 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
+ 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
+ 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
+ optimization 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.
-
+ 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
+ subpattern earlier (that is, to its left) in the pattern, provided
+ there have been that many previous capturing left parentheses.
- 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
+ pattern. 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 digits following a backslash.
- 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
+ A back reference matches whatever actually matched the capturing
+ subpattern 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,
+ 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
+ example,
((?i)rah)\s+\1
- matches "rah rah" and "RAH RAH", but not "RAH rah", even though the
- original capturing subpattern is matched caselessly.
+ 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:
+ 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
+ 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.
+ 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 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
+ subpatterns. 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.
-
+ matches any number of "a"s and also "aba", "ababbaa" etc. At each
+ iteration 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 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,
+ 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
+ matches a word followed by a semicolon, but does not include the
+ semicolon in the match, and
foo(?!bar)
- matches any occurrence of "foo" that is not followed by "bar". Note
- that the apparently similar pattern
+ 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.
+ 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.
+ 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,
+ 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
+ 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
+ several alternatives, they do not all have to have the same fixed
+ length. Thus
(?<=bullock|donkey)
- is permitted, but
+ 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
+ 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:
+ 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.
+ 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
+ current 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.
+ 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
+ impossible 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
+ 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
+ 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
+ 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,
+ 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.
+ 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,
+ 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
+ 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"
+ preceded by six characters, the first of which are digits and the last
+ three of which are not "999". For example, it doesn't match
+ "123abcfoo". 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".
+ 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,
+ 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
+ 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".
+ 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.
-
+ 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
+ subpatterns 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
- subpattern matched or not. The two possible forms of conditional sub-
- pattern are
+ It is possible to cause the matching process to obey a subpattern
+ conditionally or to choose between two alternative subpatterns,
+ depending on the result of an assertion, or whether a previous
+ capturing subpattern 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.
+ If the condition is satisfied, the yes-pattern is used; otherwise the
+ no-pattern (if present) is used. If there are more than two
+ alternatives 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:
+ 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
+ contains 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:
- ( \( )? [^()]+ (?(1) \) )
+ ( \( )? [^()]+ (?(1) \) )
- 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.
+ The first part matches an optional opening parenthesis, and if that
+ character is present, sets it as the first captured substring. The
+ second 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-pattern 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 the string (R), it is satisfied if a recursive call
+ to the pattern or subpattern has been made. At "top level", the
+ condition 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:
+ 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.
-
+ 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.
- 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.
-
+ If the PCRE_EXTENDED option is set, an unescaped # character outside a
+ character class introduces a comment that continues up to the next
+ newline 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:
+ 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
+ interpolating Perl code in the expression at run time, and the code can
+ refer to the expression itself. A Perl pattern to solve the parentheses
+ problem 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 (?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.
+ 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
+ section.) 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):
+ 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.
+ 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
+ parenthesized 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:
+ 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:
+ We have put the pattern into parentheses, and caused the recursion to
+ refer to them instead of the whole pattern. In a larger pattern,
+ keeping track of parenthesis numbers can be tricky. It may be more
+ convenient 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
+ 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.
+ 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
+ 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
+ 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.
+ 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
+ pattern, PCRE has to obtain extra memory to store data during a
+ recursion, which it does by using pcre_malloc, freeing it via pcre_free
+ afterwards. 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.
+ Do not confuse the (?R) item with the condition (R), which tests for
+ recursion. Consider this pattern, which matches text in angle
+ brackets, allowing for arbitrary nesting. Only digits are allowed in
+ nested brackets (that is, when recursing), whereas any characters are
+ permitted 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.
-
+ 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
+ If the syntax for a recursive subpattern reference (either by number or
+ by name) is used outside the parentheses to which it refers, it
+ operates 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
+ 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.
-
+ 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
+ substrings that match the same pair of parentheses when there is a
+ repetition.
- 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.
- 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:
+ 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.
-
+ 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
+ documentation.
DIFFERENCES FROM PERL
- This section escribes the differences in the ways that PCRE and Perl
- handle regular expressions. The differences described here are with
- respect to Perl 5.8.
+ This section escribes the differences in the ways that PCRE and Perl
+ handle regular expressions. The differences described here are with
+ respect to Perl 5.8.
- 1. PCRE does not have full UTF-8 support. Details of what it does have
- are given in the section on UTF-8 support in the main pcre page.
+ 1. PCRE does not have full UTF-8 support. Details of what it does have
+ are given in the section on UTF-8 support in the main pcre page.
- 2. PCRE does not allow repeat quantifiers on lookahead assertions. Perl
- permits them, 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.
+ 2. PCRE does not allow repeat quantifiers on lookahead assertions.
+ Perl permits them, 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.
- 3. Capturing subpatterns that occur inside negative lookahead asser-
- tions are counted, but their entries in the offsets vector are never
- set. Perl sets its numerical variables from any such patterns that are
- matched before the assertion fails to match something (thereby succeed-
- ing), but only if the negative lookahead assertion contains just one
- branch.
+ 3. Capturing subpatterns that occur inside negative lookahead
+ assertions are counted, but their entries in the offsets vector are
+ never set. Perl sets its numerical variables from any such patterns
+ that are matched before the assertion fails to match something
+ (thereby succeeding), but only if the negative lookahead assertion
+ contains just one branch.
- 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 nor-
- mal C string, terminated by zero. The escape sequence "\0" can be used
- in the pattern to represent a binary zero.
+ 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, \P, \p, \N, and \X. 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.
+ 5. The following Perl escape sequences are not supported: \l, \u, \L,
+ \U, \P, \p, \N, and \X. 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.
- 6. PCRE does support the \Q...\E escape for quoting substrings. Charac-
- ters 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:
+ 6. 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:
Pattern PCRE matches Perl matches
@@ -1328,61 +1291,59 @@
\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.
+ The \Q...\E sequence is recognized both inside and outside character
+ classes.
- 7. Fairly obviously, PCRE does not support the (?{code}) and (?p{code})
- constructions. However, there is some experimental support for recur-
- sive patterns using the non-Perl items (?R), (?number) and (?P>name).
- Also, the PCRE "callout" feature allows an external function to be
- called during pattern matching.
+ 7. Fairly obviously, PCRE does not support the (?{code}) and
+ (?p{code}) constructions. However, there is some experimental support
+ for recursive patterns using the non-Perl items (?R), (?number) and
+ (?P>name). Also, the PCRE "callout" feature allows an external function
+ to be called during pattern matching.
- 8. 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 $2
- unset, but in PCRE it is set to "b".
+ 8. There are some differences that are concerned with the settings of
+ captured strings when part of a pattern is repeated. For example,
+ matching "aba" against the pattern /^(a(b)?)+$/ in Perl leaves $2
+ unset, but in PCRE it is set to "b".
- 9. PCRE provides some extensions to the Perl regular expression
- facilities:
+ 9. PCRE provides some extensions to the Perl regular expression
+ facilities:
- (a) Although lookbehind assertions 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.
+ (a) Although lookbehind assertions 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.
+ (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 spe-
- cial meaning is faulted.
+ (c) If PCRE_EXTRA is set, a backslash followed by a letter with no
+ special meaning is faulted.
- (d) If PCRE_UNGREEDY is set, the greediness of the repetition quanti-
- fiers is inverted, that is, by default they are not greedy, but if fol-
- lowed by a question mark they are.
+ (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 to force a pattern to be tried only at
- the first matching position in the subject string.
+ (e) PCRE_ANCHORED can be used 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, and PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAP-
- TURE options for pcre_exec() have no Perl equivalents.
+ (f) The PCRE_NOTBOL, PCRE_NOTEOL, PCRE_NOTEMPTY, and
+ PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE options for pcre_exec() have no Perl equivalents.
- (g) The (?R), (?number), and (?P>name) constructs allows for recursive
- pattern matching (Perl can do this using the (?p{code}) construct,
- which PCRE cannot support.)
+ (g) The (?R), (?number), and (?P>name) constructs allows for recursive
+ pattern matching (Perl can do this using the (?p{code}) construct,
+ which PCRE cannot support.)
- (h) PCRE supports named capturing substrings, using the Python syntax.
+ (h) PCRE supports named capturing substrings, using the Python syntax.
- (i) PCRE supports the possessive quantifier "++" syntax, taken from
- Sun's Java package.
+ (i) PCRE supports the possessive quantifier "++" syntax, taken from
+ Sun's Java package.
- (j) The (R) condition, for testing recursion, is a PCRE extension.
+ (j) The (R) condition, for testing recursion, is a PCRE extension.
- (k) The callout facility is PCRE-specific.
-
-
+ (k) The callout facility is PCRE-specific.
NOTES
The \< and \> metacharacters from Henry Spencers package
- are not available in PCRE, but can be emulate with \b,
+ are not available in PCRE, but can be emulated with \b,
as required, also in conjunction with \W or \w.
In LDMud, backtracks are limited by the EVAL_COST runtime
@@ -1391,25 +1352,23 @@
LDMud doesn't support PCRE callouts.
-
LIMITATIONS
There are some size limitations in PCRE but it is hoped that
- they will never in practice be relevant. The maximum length
- of a compiled pattern is 65539 (sic) bytes. All values in
- repeating quantifiers must be less than 65536. There max-
- imum number of capturing subpatterns is 65535. There is no
- limit to the number of non-capturing subpatterns, but the
- maximum depth of nesting of all kinds of parenthesized sub-
- pattern, including capturing subpatterns, assertions, and
- other types of subpattern, is 200.
+ they will never in practice be relevant. The maximum length
+ of a compiled pattern is 65539 (sic) bytes. All values in
+ repeating quantifiers must be less than 65536. There
+ maximum number of capturing subpatterns is 65535. There is no
+ limit to the number of non-capturing subpatterns, but the
+ maximum depth of nesting of all kinds of parenthesized
+ subpattern, including capturing subpatterns, assertions,
+ and other types of subpattern, is 200.
- The maximum length of a subject string is the largest posi-
- tive number that an integer variable can hold. However, PCRE
- uses recursion to handle subpatterns and indefinite repeti-
- tion. This means that the available stack space may limit
- the size of a subject string that can be processed by cer-
- tain patterns.
-
+ The maximum length of a subject string is the largest
+ positive number that an integer variable can hold. However,
+ PCRE uses recursion to handle subpatterns and indefinite
+ repetition. This means that the available stack space may
+ limit the size of a subject string that can be processed by
+ certain patterns.
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel <ph10@cam.ac.uk>