1 .TH PCRE_EXEC 3 "12 May 2013" "PCRE 8.33"
3 PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
10 .B int pcre_exec(const pcre *\fIcode\fP, "const pcre_extra *\fIextra\fP,"
11 .B " const char *\fIsubject\fP, int \fIlength\fP, int \fIstartoffset\fP,"
12 .B " int \fIoptions\fP, int *\fIovector\fP, int \fIovecsize\fP);"
14 .B int pcre16_exec(const pcre16 *\fIcode\fP, "const pcre16_extra *\fIextra\fP,"
15 .B " PCRE_SPTR16 \fIsubject\fP, int \fIlength\fP, int \fIstartoffset\fP,"
16 .B " int \fIoptions\fP, int *\fIovector\fP, int \fIovecsize\fP);"
18 .B int pcre32_exec(const pcre32 *\fIcode\fP, "const pcre32_extra *\fIextra\fP,"
19 .B " PCRE_SPTR32 \fIsubject\fP, int \fIlength\fP, int \fIstartoffset\fP,"
20 .B " int \fIoptions\fP, int *\fIovector\fP, int \fIovecsize\fP);"
26 This function matches a compiled regular expression against a given subject
27 string, using a matching algorithm that is similar to Perl's. It returns
28 offsets to captured substrings. Its arguments are:
30 \fIcode\fP Points to the compiled pattern
31 \fIextra\fP Points to an associated \fBpcre[16|32]_extra\fP structure,
33 \fIsubject\fP Points to the subject string
34 \fIlength\fP Length of the subject string
35 \fIstartoffset\fP Offset in the subject at which to start matching
36 \fIoptions\fP Option bits
37 \fIovector\fP Points to a vector of ints for result offsets
38 \fIovecsize\fP Number of elements in the vector (a multiple of 3)
40 The units for \fIlength\fP and \fIstartoffset\fP are bytes for
41 \fBpcre_exec()\fP, 16-bit data items for \fBpcre16_exec()\fP, and 32-bit items
42 for \fBpcre32_exec()\fP. The options are:
44 PCRE_ANCHORED Match only at the first position
45 PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF \eR matches only CR, LF, or CRLF
46 PCRE_BSR_UNICODE \eR matches all Unicode line endings
47 PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY Recognize any Unicode newline sequence
48 PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF Recognize CR, LF, & CRLF as newline sequences
49 PCRE_NEWLINE_CR Recognize CR as the only newline sequence
50 PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF Recognize CRLF as the only newline sequence
51 PCRE_NEWLINE_LF Recognize LF as the only newline sequence
52 PCRE_NOTBOL Subject string is not the beginning of a line
53 PCRE_NOTEOL Subject string is not the end of a line
54 PCRE_NOTEMPTY An empty string is not a valid match
55 PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART An empty string at the start of the subject
57 PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE Do not do "start-match" optimizations
58 PCRE_NO_UTF16_CHECK Do not check the subject for UTF-16
59 validity (only relevant if PCRE_UTF16
60 was set at compile time)
61 PCRE_NO_UTF32_CHECK Do not check the subject for UTF-32
62 validity (only relevant if PCRE_UTF32
63 was set at compile time)
64 PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK Do not check the subject for UTF-8
65 validity (only relevant if PCRE_UTF8
66 was set at compile time)
67 PCRE_PARTIAL ) Return PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL for a partial
68 PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT ) match if no full matches are found
69 PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD Return PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL for a partial match
70 if that is found before a full match
72 For details of partial matching, see the
76 page. A \fBpcre_extra\fP structure contains the following fields:
78 \fIflags\fP Bits indicating which fields are set
79 \fIstudy_data\fP Opaque data from \fBpcre[16|32]_study()\fP
80 \fImatch_limit\fP Limit on internal resource use
81 \fImatch_limit_recursion\fP Limit on internal recursion depth
82 \fIcallout_data\fP Opaque data passed back to callouts
83 \fItables\fP Points to character tables or is NULL
84 \fImark\fP For passing back a *MARK pointer
85 \fIexecutable_jit\fP Opaque data from JIT compilation
87 The flag bits are PCRE_EXTRA_STUDY_DATA, PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT,
88 PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION, PCRE_EXTRA_CALLOUT_DATA,
89 PCRE_EXTRA_TABLES, PCRE_EXTRA_MARK and PCRE_EXTRA_EXECUTABLE_JIT.
91 There is a complete description of the PCRE native API in the
95 page and a description of the POSIX API in the