1 README file for PCRE (Perl-compatible regular expression library)
2 -----------------------------------------------------------------
4 The latest release of PCRE is always available in three alternative formats
7 ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.tar.gz
8 ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.tar.bz2
9 ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.zip
11 There is a mailing list for discussion about the development of PCRE at
12 pcre-dev@exim.org. You can access the archives and subscribe or manage your
15 https://lists.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/pcre-dev
17 Please read the NEWS file if you are upgrading from a previous release.
18 The contents of this README file are:
21 Documentation for PCRE
22 Contributions by users of PCRE
23 Building PCRE on non-Unix-like systems
24 Building PCRE without using autotools
25 Building PCRE using autotools
26 Retrieving configuration information
28 Cross-compiling using autotools
29 Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)
30 Compiling in Tru64 using native compilers
31 Using Sun's compilers for Solaris
42 PCRE is written in C, and it has its own API. There are three sets of
43 functions, one for the 8-bit library, which processes strings of bytes, one for
44 the 16-bit library, which processes strings of 16-bit values, and one for the
45 32-bit library, which processes strings of 32-bit values. The distribution also
46 includes a set of C++ wrapper functions (see the pcrecpp man page for details),
47 courtesy of Google Inc., which can be used to call the 8-bit PCRE library from
50 In addition, there is a set of C wrapper functions (again, just for the 8-bit
51 library) that are based on the POSIX regular expression API (see the pcreposix
52 man page). These end up in the library called libpcreposix. Note that this just
53 provides a POSIX calling interface to PCRE; the regular expressions themselves
54 still follow Perl syntax and semantics. The POSIX API is restricted, and does
55 not give full access to all of PCRE's facilities.
57 The header file for the POSIX-style functions is called pcreposix.h. The
58 official POSIX name is regex.h, but I did not want to risk possible problems
59 with existing files of that name by distributing it that way. To use PCRE with
60 an existing program that uses the POSIX API, pcreposix.h will have to be
61 renamed or pointed at by a link.
63 If you are using the POSIX interface to PCRE and there is already a POSIX regex
64 library installed on your system, as well as worrying about the regex.h header
65 file (as mentioned above), you must also take care when linking programs to
66 ensure that they link with PCRE's libpcreposix library. Otherwise they may pick
67 up the POSIX functions of the same name from the other library.
69 One way of avoiding this confusion is to compile PCRE with the addition of
70 -Dregcomp=PCREregcomp (and similarly for the other POSIX functions) to the
71 compiler flags (CFLAGS if you are using "configure" -- see below). This has the
72 effect of renaming the functions so that the names no longer clash. Of course,
73 you have to do the same thing for your applications, or write them using the
77 Documentation for PCRE
78 ----------------------
80 If you install PCRE in the normal way on a Unix-like system, you will end up
81 with a set of man pages whose names all start with "pcre". The one that is just
82 called "pcre" lists all the others. In addition to these man pages, the PCRE
83 documentation is supplied in two other forms:
85 1. There are files called doc/pcre.txt, doc/pcregrep.txt, and
86 doc/pcretest.txt in the source distribution. The first of these is a
87 concatenation of the text forms of all the section 3 man pages except
88 the listing of pcredemo.c and those that summarize individual functions.
89 The other two are the text forms of the section 1 man pages for the
90 pcregrep and pcretest commands. These text forms are provided for ease of
91 scanning with text editors or similar tools. They are installed in
92 <prefix>/share/doc/pcre, where <prefix> is the installation prefix
93 (defaulting to /usr/local).
95 2. A set of files containing all the documentation in HTML form, hyperlinked
96 in various ways, and rooted in a file called index.html, is distributed in
97 doc/html and installed in <prefix>/share/doc/pcre/html.
99 Users of PCRE have contributed files containing the documentation for various
100 releases in CHM format. These can be found in the Contrib directory of the FTP
101 site (see next section).
104 Contributions by users of PCRE
105 ------------------------------
107 You can find contributions from PCRE users in the directory
109 ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/Contrib
111 There is a README file giving brief descriptions of what they are. Some are
112 complete in themselves; others are pointers to URLs containing relevant files.
113 Some of this material is likely to be well out-of-date. Several of the earlier
114 contributions provided support for compiling PCRE on various flavours of
115 Windows (I myself do not use Windows). Nowadays there is more Windows support
116 in the standard distribution, so these contibutions have been archived.
118 A PCRE user maintains downloadable Windows binaries of the pcregrep and
119 pcretest programs here:
121 http://www.rexegg.com/pcregrep-pcretest.html
124 Building PCRE on non-Unix-like systems
125 --------------------------------------
127 For a non-Unix-like system, please read the comments in the file
128 NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD, though if your system supports the use of "configure" and
129 "make" you may be able to build PCRE using autotools in the same way as for
130 many Unix-like systems.
132 PCRE can also be configured using the GUI facility provided by CMake's
133 cmake-gui command. This creates Makefiles, solution files, etc. The file
134 NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD has information about CMake.
136 PCRE has been compiled on many different operating systems. It should be
137 straightforward to build PCRE on any system that has a Standard C compiler and
138 library, because it uses only Standard C functions.
141 Building PCRE without using autotools
142 -------------------------------------
144 The use of autotools (in particular, libtool) is problematic in some
145 environments, even some that are Unix or Unix-like. See the NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD
146 file for ways of building PCRE without using autotools.
149 Building PCRE using autotools
150 -----------------------------
152 If you are using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC), please see the special note
153 in the section entitled "Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)" below.
155 The following instructions assume the use of the widely used "configure; make;
156 make install" (autotools) process.
158 To build PCRE on system that supports autotools, first run the "configure"
159 command from the PCRE distribution directory, with your current directory set
160 to the directory where you want the files to be created. This command is a
161 standard GNU "autoconf" configuration script, for which generic instructions
162 are supplied in the file INSTALL.
164 Most commonly, people build PCRE within its own distribution directory, and in
165 this case, on many systems, just running "./configure" is sufficient. However,
166 the usual methods of changing standard defaults are available. For example:
168 CFLAGS='-O2 -Wall' ./configure --prefix=/opt/local
170 This command specifies that the C compiler should be run with the flags '-O2
171 -Wall' instead of the default, and that "make install" should install PCRE
172 under /opt/local instead of the default /usr/local.
174 If you want to build in a different directory, just run "configure" with that
175 directory as current. For example, suppose you have unpacked the PCRE source
176 into /source/pcre/pcre-xxx, but you want to build it in /build/pcre/pcre-xxx:
178 cd /build/pcre/pcre-xxx
179 /source/pcre/pcre-xxx/configure
181 PCRE is written in C and is normally compiled as a C library. However, it is
182 possible to build it as a C++ library, though the provided building apparatus
183 does not have any features to support this.
185 There are some optional features that can be included or omitted from the PCRE
186 library. They are also documented in the pcrebuild man page.
188 . By default, both shared and static libraries are built. You can change this
189 by adding one of these options to the "configure" command:
194 (See also "Shared libraries on Unix-like systems" below.)
196 . By default, only the 8-bit library is built. If you add --enable-pcre16 to
197 the "configure" command, the 16-bit library is also built. If you add
198 --enable-pcre32 to the "configure" command, the 32-bit library is also built.
199 If you want only the 16-bit or 32-bit library, use --disable-pcre8 to disable
200 building the 8-bit library.
202 . If you are building the 8-bit library and want to suppress the building of
203 the C++ wrapper library, you can add --disable-cpp to the "configure"
204 command. Otherwise, when "configure" is run without --disable-pcre8, it will
205 try to find a C++ compiler and C++ header files, and if it succeeds, it will
206 try to build the C++ wrapper.
208 . If you want to include support for just-in-time compiling, which can give
209 large performance improvements on certain platforms, add --enable-jit to the
210 "configure" command. This support is available only for certain hardware
211 architectures. If you try to enable it on an unsupported architecture, there
212 will be a compile time error.
214 . When JIT support is enabled, pcregrep automatically makes use of it, unless
215 you add --disable-pcregrep-jit to the "configure" command.
217 . If you want to make use of the support for UTF-8 Unicode character strings in
218 the 8-bit library, or UTF-16 Unicode character strings in the 16-bit library,
219 or UTF-32 Unicode character strings in the 32-bit library, you must add
220 --enable-utf to the "configure" command. Without it, the code for handling
221 UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-8 is not included in the relevant library. Even
222 when --enable-utf is included, the use of a UTF encoding still has to be
223 enabled by an option at run time. When PCRE is compiled with this option, its
224 input can only either be ASCII or UTF-8/16/32, even when running on EBCDIC
225 platforms. It is not possible to use both --enable-utf and --enable-ebcdic at
228 . There are no separate options for enabling UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32
229 independently because that would allow ridiculous settings such as requesting
230 UTF-16 support while building only the 8-bit library. However, the option
231 --enable-utf8 is retained for backwards compatibility with earlier releases
232 that did not support 16-bit or 32-bit character strings. It is synonymous with
233 --enable-utf. It is not possible to configure one library with UTF support
234 and the other without in the same configuration.
236 . If, in addition to support for UTF-8/16/32 character strings, you want to
237 include support for the \P, \p, and \X sequences that recognize Unicode
238 character properties, you must add --enable-unicode-properties to the
239 "configure" command. This adds about 30K to the size of the library (in the
240 form of a property table); only the basic two-letter properties such as Lu
243 . You can build PCRE to recognize either CR or LF or the sequence CRLF or any
244 of the preceding, or any of the Unicode newline sequences as indicating the
245 end of a line. Whatever you specify at build time is the default; the caller
246 of PCRE can change the selection at run time. The default newline indicator
247 is a single LF character (the Unix standard). You can specify the default
248 newline indicator by adding --enable-newline-is-cr or --enable-newline-is-lf
249 or --enable-newline-is-crlf or --enable-newline-is-anycrlf or
250 --enable-newline-is-any to the "configure" command, respectively.
252 If you specify --enable-newline-is-cr or --enable-newline-is-crlf, some of
253 the standard tests will fail, because the lines in the test files end with
254 LF. Even if the files are edited to change the line endings, there are likely
255 to be some failures. With --enable-newline-is-anycrlf or
256 --enable-newline-is-any, many tests should succeed, but there may be some
259 . By default, the sequence \R in a pattern matches any Unicode line ending
260 sequence. This is independent of the option specifying what PCRE considers to
261 be the end of a line (see above). However, the caller of PCRE can restrict \R
262 to match only CR, LF, or CRLF. You can make this the default by adding
263 --enable-bsr-anycrlf to the "configure" command (bsr = "backslash R").
265 . When called via the POSIX interface, PCRE uses malloc() to get additional
266 storage for processing capturing parentheses if there are more than 10 of
267 them in a pattern. You can increase this threshold by setting, for example,
269 --with-posix-malloc-threshold=20
271 on the "configure" command.
273 . PCRE has a counter that limits the depth of nesting of parentheses in a
274 pattern. This limits the amount of system stack that a pattern uses when it
275 is compiled. The default is 250, but you can change it by setting, for
278 --with-parens-nest-limit=500
280 . PCRE has a counter that can be set to limit the amount of resources it uses
281 when matching a pattern. If the limit is exceeded during a match, the match
282 fails. The default is ten million. You can change the default by setting, for
285 --with-match-limit=500000
287 on the "configure" command. This is just the default; individual calls to
288 pcre_exec() can supply their own value. There is more discussion on the
291 . There is a separate counter that limits the depth of recursive function calls
292 during a matching process. This also has a default of ten million, which is
293 essentially "unlimited". You can change the default by setting, for example,
295 --with-match-limit-recursion=500000
297 Recursive function calls use up the runtime stack; running out of stack can
298 cause programs to crash in strange ways. There is a discussion about stack
299 sizes in the pcrestack man page.
301 . The default maximum compiled pattern size is around 64K. You can increase
302 this by adding --with-link-size=3 to the "configure" command. In the 8-bit
303 library, PCRE then uses three bytes instead of two for offsets to different
304 parts of the compiled pattern. In the 16-bit library, --with-link-size=3 is
305 the same as --with-link-size=4, which (in both libraries) uses four-byte
306 offsets. Increasing the internal link size reduces performance. In the 32-bit
307 library, the only supported link size is 4.
309 . You can build PCRE so that its internal match() function that is called from
310 pcre_exec() does not call itself recursively. Instead, it uses memory blocks
311 obtained from the heap via the special functions pcre_stack_malloc() and
312 pcre_stack_free() to save data that would otherwise be saved on the stack. To
313 build PCRE like this, use
315 --disable-stack-for-recursion
317 on the "configure" command. PCRE runs more slowly in this mode, but it may be
318 necessary in environments with limited stack sizes. This applies only to the
319 normal execution of the pcre_exec() function; if JIT support is being
320 successfully used, it is not relevant. Equally, it does not apply to
321 pcre_dfa_exec(), which does not use deeply nested recursion. There is a
322 discussion about stack sizes in the pcrestack man page.
324 . For speed, PCRE uses four tables for manipulating and identifying characters
325 whose code point values are less than 256. By default, it uses a set of
326 tables for ASCII encoding that is part of the distribution. If you specify
328 --enable-rebuild-chartables
330 a program called dftables is compiled and run in the default C locale when
331 you obey "make". It builds a source file called pcre_chartables.c. If you do
332 not specify this option, pcre_chartables.c is created as a copy of
333 pcre_chartables.c.dist. See "Character tables" below for further information.
335 . It is possible to compile PCRE for use on systems that use EBCDIC as their
336 character code (as opposed to ASCII/Unicode) by specifying
340 This automatically implies --enable-rebuild-chartables (see above). However,
341 when PCRE is built this way, it always operates in EBCDIC. It cannot support
342 both EBCDIC and UTF-8/16/32. There is a second option, --enable-ebcdic-nl25,
343 which specifies that the code value for the EBCDIC NL character is 0x25
344 instead of the default 0x15.
346 . In environments where valgrind is installed, if you specify
350 PCRE will use valgrind annotations to mark certain memory regions as
351 unaddressable. This allows it to detect invalid memory accesses, and is
352 mostly useful for debugging PCRE itself.
354 . In environments where the gcc compiler is used and lcov version 1.6 or above
355 is installed, if you specify
359 the build process implements a code coverage report for the test suite. The
360 report is generated by running "make coverage". If ccache is installed on
361 your system, it must be disabled when building PCRE for coverage reporting.
362 You can do this by setting the environment variable CCACHE_DISABLE=1 before
363 running "make" to build PCRE. There is more information about coverage
364 reporting in the "pcrebuild" documentation.
366 . The pcregrep program currently supports only 8-bit data files, and so
367 requires the 8-bit PCRE library. It is possible to compile pcregrep to use
368 libz and/or libbz2, in order to read .gz and .bz2 files (respectively), by
369 specifying one or both of
371 --enable-pcregrep-libz
372 --enable-pcregrep-libbz2
374 Of course, the relevant libraries must be installed on your system.
376 . The default size (in bytes) of the internal buffer used by pcregrep can be
379 --with-pcregrep-bufsize=51200
381 The value must be a plain integer. The default is 20480.
383 . It is possible to compile pcretest so that it links with the libreadline
384 or libedit libraries, by specifying, respectively,
386 --enable-pcretest-libreadline or --enable-pcretest-libedit
388 If this is done, when pcretest's input is from a terminal, it reads it using
389 the readline() function. This provides line-editing and history facilities.
390 Note that libreadline is GPL-licenced, so if you distribute a binary of
391 pcretest linked in this way, there may be licensing issues. These can be
392 avoided by linking with libedit (which has a BSD licence) instead.
394 Enabling libreadline causes the -lreadline option to be added to the pcretest
395 build. In many operating environments with a sytem-installed readline
396 library this is sufficient. However, in some environments (e.g. if an
397 unmodified distribution version of readline is in use), it may be necessary
398 to specify something like LIBS="-lncurses" as well. This is because, to quote
399 the readline INSTALL, "Readline uses the termcap functions, but does not link
400 with the termcap or curses library itself, allowing applications which link
401 with readline the to choose an appropriate library." If you get error
402 messages about missing functions tgetstr, tgetent, tputs, tgetflag, or tgoto,
403 this is the problem, and linking with the ncurses library should fix it.
405 The "configure" script builds the following files for the basic C library:
407 . Makefile the makefile that builds the library
408 . config.h build-time configuration options for the library
409 . pcre.h the public PCRE header file
410 . pcre-config script that shows the building settings such as CFLAGS
411 that were set for "configure"
412 . libpcre.pc ) data for the pkg-config command
416 . libtool script that builds shared and/or static libraries
418 Versions of config.h and pcre.h are distributed in the PCRE tarballs under the
419 names config.h.generic and pcre.h.generic. These are provided for those who
420 have to built PCRE without using "configure" or CMake. If you use "configure"
421 or CMake, the .generic versions are not used.
423 When building the 8-bit library, if a C++ compiler is found, the following
424 files are also built:
426 . libpcrecpp.pc data for the pkg-config command
427 . pcrecpparg.h header file for calling PCRE via the C++ wrapper
428 . pcre_stringpiece.h header for the C++ "stringpiece" functions
430 The "configure" script also creates config.status, which is an executable
431 script that can be run to recreate the configuration, and config.log, which
432 contains compiler output from tests that "configure" runs.
434 Once "configure" has run, you can run "make". This builds the the libraries
435 libpcre, libpcre16 and/or libpcre32, and a test program called pcretest. If you
436 enabled JIT support with --enable-jit, a test program called pcre_jit_test is
439 If the 8-bit library is built, libpcreposix and the pcregrep command are also
440 built, and if a C++ compiler was found on your system, and you did not disable
441 it with --disable-cpp, "make" builds the C++ wrapper library, which is called
442 libpcrecpp, as well as some test programs called pcrecpp_unittest,
443 pcre_scanner_unittest, and pcre_stringpiece_unittest.
445 The command "make check" runs all the appropriate tests. Details of the PCRE
446 tests are given below in a separate section of this document.
448 You can use "make install" to install PCRE into live directories on your
449 system. The following are installed (file names are all relative to the
450 <prefix> that is set when "configure" is run):
454 pcregrep (if 8-bit support is enabled)
458 libpcre16 (if 16-bit support is enabled)
459 libpcre32 (if 32-bit support is enabled)
460 libpcre (if 8-bit support is enabled)
461 libpcreposix (if 8-bit support is enabled)
462 libpcrecpp (if 8-bit and C++ support is enabled)
464 Configuration information (lib/pkgconfig):
469 libpcrecpp.pc (if C++ support is enabled)
471 Header files (include):
475 pcre_stringpiece.h ) if C++ support is enabled
479 Man pages (share/man/man{1,3}):
484 pcre*.3 (lots more pages, all starting "pcre")
486 HTML documentation (share/doc/pcre/html):
488 *.html (lots more pages, hyperlinked from index.html)
490 Text file documentation (share/doc/pcre):
497 pcre.txt (a concatenation of the man(3) pages)
498 pcretest.txt the pcretest man page
499 pcregrep.txt the pcregrep man page
500 pcre-config.txt the pcre-config man page
502 If you want to remove PCRE from your system, you can run "make uninstall".
503 This removes all the files that "make install" installed. However, it does not
504 remove any directories, because these are often shared with other programs.
507 Retrieving configuration information
508 ------------------------------------
510 Running "make install" installs the command pcre-config, which can be used to
511 recall information about the PCRE configuration and installation. For example:
513 pcre-config --version
515 prints the version number, and
519 outputs information about where the library is installed. This command can be
520 included in makefiles for programs that use PCRE, saving the programmer from
521 having to remember too many details.
523 The pkg-config command is another system for saving and retrieving information
524 about installed libraries. Instead of separate commands for each library, a
525 single command is used. For example:
527 pkg-config --cflags pcre
529 The data is held in *.pc files that are installed in a directory called
530 <prefix>/lib/pkgconfig.
536 The default distribution builds PCRE as shared libraries and static libraries,
537 as long as the operating system supports shared libraries. Shared library
538 support relies on the "libtool" script which is built as part of the
541 The libtool script is used to compile and link both shared and static
542 libraries. They are placed in a subdirectory called .libs when they are newly
543 built. The programs pcretest and pcregrep are built to use these uninstalled
544 libraries (by means of wrapper scripts in the case of shared libraries). When
545 you use "make install" to install shared libraries, pcregrep and pcretest are
546 automatically re-built to use the newly installed shared libraries before being
547 installed themselves. However, the versions left in the build directory still
548 use the uninstalled libraries.
550 To build PCRE using static libraries only you must use --disable-shared when
551 configuring it. For example:
553 ./configure --prefix=/usr/gnu --disable-shared
555 Then run "make" in the usual way. Similarly, you can use --disable-static to
556 build only shared libraries.
559 Cross-compiling using autotools
560 -------------------------------
562 You can specify CC and CFLAGS in the normal way to the "configure" command, in
563 order to cross-compile PCRE for some other host. However, you should NOT
564 specify --enable-rebuild-chartables, because if you do, the dftables.c source
565 file is compiled and run on the local host, in order to generate the inbuilt
566 character tables (the pcre_chartables.c file). This will probably not work,
567 because dftables.c needs to be compiled with the local compiler, not the cross
570 When --enable-rebuild-chartables is not specified, pcre_chartables.c is created
571 by making a copy of pcre_chartables.c.dist, which is a default set of tables
572 that assumes ASCII code. Cross-compiling with the default tables should not be
575 If you need to modify the character tables when cross-compiling, you should
576 move pcre_chartables.c.dist out of the way, then compile dftables.c by hand and
577 run it on the local host to make a new version of pcre_chartables.c.dist.
578 Then when you cross-compile PCRE this new version of the tables will be used.
581 Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)
582 ----------------------------------
584 Unless C++ support is disabled by specifying the "--disable-cpp" option of the
585 "configure" script, you must include the "-AA" option in the CXXFLAGS
586 environment variable in order for the C++ components to compile correctly.
588 Also, note that the aCC compiler on PA-RISC platforms may have a defect whereby
589 needed libraries fail to get included when specifying the "-AA" compiler
590 option. If you experience unresolved symbols when linking the C++ programs,
591 use the workaround of specifying the following environment variable prior to
592 running the "configure" script:
594 CXXLDFLAGS="-lstd_v2 -lCsup_v2"
597 Compiling in Tru64 using native compilers
598 -----------------------------------------
600 The following error may occur when compiling with native compilers in the Tru64
603 CXX libpcrecpp_la-pcrecpp.lo
604 cxx: Error: /usr/lib/cmplrs/cxx/V7.1-006/include/cxx/iosfwd, line 58: #error
605 directive: "cannot include iosfwd -- define __USE_STD_IOSTREAM to
606 override default - see section 7.1.2 of the C++ Using Guide"
607 #error "cannot include iosfwd -- define __USE_STD_IOSTREAM to override default
608 - see section 7.1.2 of the C++ Using Guide"
610 This may be followed by other errors, complaining that 'namespace "std" has no
611 member'. The solution to this is to add the line
613 #define __USE_STD_IOSTREAM 1
615 to the config.h file.
618 Using Sun's compilers for Solaris
619 ---------------------------------
621 A user reports that the following configurations work on Solaris 9 sparcv9 and
622 Solaris 9 x86 (32-bit):
624 Solaris 9 sparcv9: ./configure --disable-cpp CC=/bin/cc CFLAGS="-m64 -g"
625 Solaris 9 x86: ./configure --disable-cpp CC=/bin/cc CFLAGS="-g"
628 Using PCRE from MySQL
629 ---------------------
631 On systems where both PCRE and MySQL are installed, it is possible to make use
632 of PCRE from within MySQL, as an alternative to the built-in pattern matching.
633 There is a web page that tells you how to do this:
635 http://www.mysqludf.org/lib_mysqludf_preg/index.php
641 The command "make dist" creates three PCRE tarballs, in tar.gz, tar.bz2, and
642 zip formats. The command "make distcheck" does the same, but then does a trial
643 build of the new distribution to ensure that it works.
645 If you have modified any of the man page sources in the doc directory, you
646 should first run the PrepareRelease script before making a distribution. This
647 script creates the .txt and HTML forms of the documentation from the man pages.
653 To test the basic PCRE library on a Unix-like system, run the RunTest script.
654 There is another script called RunGrepTest that tests the options of the
655 pcregrep command. If the C++ wrapper library is built, three test programs
656 called pcrecpp_unittest, pcre_scanner_unittest, and pcre_stringpiece_unittest
657 are also built. When JIT support is enabled, another test program called
658 pcre_jit_test is built.
660 Both the scripts and all the program tests are run if you obey "make check" or
661 "make test". For other environments, see the instructions in
664 The RunTest script runs the pcretest test program (which is documented in its
665 own man page) on each of the relevant testinput files in the testdata
666 directory, and compares the output with the contents of the corresponding
667 testoutput files. RunTest uses a file called testtry to hold the main output
668 from pcretest. Other files whose names begin with "test" are used as working
671 Some tests are relevant only when certain build-time options were selected. For
672 example, the tests for UTF-8/16/32 support are run only if --enable-utf was
673 used. RunTest outputs a comment when it skips a test.
675 Many of the tests that are not skipped are run up to three times. The second
676 run forces pcre_study() to be called for all patterns except for a few in some
677 tests that are marked "never study" (see the pcretest program for how this is
678 done). If JIT support is available, the non-DFA tests are run a third time,
679 this time with a forced pcre_study() with the PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE option.
680 This testing can be suppressed by putting "nojit" on the RunTest command line.
682 The entire set of tests is run once for each of the 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit
683 libraries that are enabled. If you want to run just one set of tests, call
684 RunTest with either the -8, -16 or -32 option.
686 If valgrind is installed, you can run the tests under it by putting "valgrind"
687 on the RunTest command line. To run pcretest on just one or more specific test
688 files, give their numbers as arguments to RunTest, for example:
692 You can also specify ranges of tests such as 3-6 or 3- (meaning 3 to the
693 end), or a number preceded by ~ to exclude a test. For example:
697 This runs tests 3 to 15, excluding test 10, and just ~13 runs all the tests
698 except test 13. Whatever order the arguments are in, the tests are always run
701 You can also call RunTest with the single argument "list" to cause it to output
704 The first test file can be fed directly into the perltest.pl script to check
705 that Perl gives the same results. The only difference you should see is in the
706 first few lines, where the Perl version is given instead of the PCRE version.
708 The second set of tests check pcre_fullinfo(), pcre_study(),
709 pcre_copy_substring(), pcre_get_substring(), pcre_get_substring_list(), error
710 detection, and run-time flags that are specific to PCRE, as well as the POSIX
711 wrapper API. It also uses the debugging flags to check some of the internals of
714 If you build PCRE with a locale setting that is not the standard C locale, the
715 character tables may be different (see next paragraph). In some cases, this may
716 cause failures in the second set of tests. For example, in a locale where the
717 isprint() function yields TRUE for characters in the range 128-255, the use of
718 [:isascii:] inside a character class defines a different set of characters, and
719 this shows up in this test as a difference in the compiled code, which is being
720 listed for checking. Where the comparison test output contains [\x00-\x7f] the
721 test will contain [\x00-\xff], and similarly in some other cases. This is not a
724 The third set of tests checks pcre_maketables(), the facility for building a
725 set of character tables for a specific locale and using them instead of the
726 default tables. The tests make use of the "fr_FR" (French) locale. Before
727 running the test, the script checks for the presence of this locale by running
728 the "locale" command. If that command fails, or if it doesn't include "fr_FR"
729 in the list of available locales, the third test cannot be run, and a comment
730 is output to say why. If running this test produces instances of the error
732 ** Failed to set locale "fr_FR"
734 in the comparison output, it means that locale is not available on your system,
735 despite being listed by "locale". This does not mean that PCRE is broken.
737 [If you are trying to run this test on Windows, you may be able to get it to
738 work by changing "fr_FR" to "french" everywhere it occurs. Alternatively, use
739 RunTest.bat. The version of RunTest.bat included with PCRE 7.4 and above uses
740 Windows versions of test 2. More info on using RunTest.bat is included in the
741 document entitled NON-UNIX-USE.]
743 The fourth and fifth tests check the UTF-8/16/32 support and error handling and
744 internal UTF features of PCRE that are not relevant to Perl, respectively. The
745 sixth and seventh tests do the same for Unicode character properties support.
747 The eighth, ninth, and tenth tests check the pcre_dfa_exec() alternative
748 matching function, in non-UTF-8/16/32 mode, UTF-8/16/32 mode, and UTF-8/16/32
749 mode with Unicode property support, respectively.
751 The eleventh test checks some internal offsets and code size features; it is
752 run only when the default "link size" of 2 is set (in other cases the sizes
753 change) and when Unicode property support is enabled.
755 The twelfth test is run only when JIT support is available, and the thirteenth
756 test is run only when JIT support is not available. They test some JIT-specific
757 features such as information output from pcretest about JIT compilation.
759 The fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth tests are run only in 8-bit mode, and
760 the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth tests are run only in 16/32-bit
761 mode. These are tests that generate different output in the two modes. They are
762 for general cases, UTF-8/16/32 support, and Unicode property support,
765 The twentieth test is run only in 16/32-bit mode. It tests some specific
766 16/32-bit features of the DFA matching engine.
768 The twenty-first and twenty-second tests are run only in 16/32-bit mode, when
769 the link size is set to 2 for the 16-bit library. They test reloading
770 pre-compiled patterns.
772 The twenty-third and twenty-fourth tests are run only in 16-bit mode. They are
773 for general cases, and UTF-16 support, respectively.
775 The twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth tests are run only in 32-bit mode. They are
776 for general cases, and UTF-32 support, respectively.
782 For speed, PCRE uses four tables for manipulating and identifying characters
783 whose code point values are less than 256. The final argument of the
784 pcre_compile() function is a pointer to a block of memory containing the
785 concatenated tables. A call to pcre_maketables() can be used to generate a set
786 of tables in the current locale. If the final argument for pcre_compile() is
787 passed as NULL, a set of default tables that is built into the binary is used.
789 The source file called pcre_chartables.c contains the default set of tables. By
790 default, this is created as a copy of pcre_chartables.c.dist, which contains
791 tables for ASCII coding. However, if --enable-rebuild-chartables is specified
792 for ./configure, a different version of pcre_chartables.c is built by the
793 program dftables (compiled from dftables.c), which uses the ANSI C character
794 handling functions such as isalnum(), isalpha(), isupper(), islower(), etc. to
795 build the table sources. This means that the default C locale which is set for
796 your system will control the contents of these default tables. You can change
797 the default tables by editing pcre_chartables.c and then re-building PCRE. If
798 you do this, you should take care to ensure that the file does not get
799 automatically re-generated. The best way to do this is to move
800 pcre_chartables.c.dist out of the way and replace it with your customized
803 When the dftables program is run as a result of --enable-rebuild-chartables,
804 it uses the default C locale that is set on your system. It does not pay
805 attention to the LC_xxx environment variables. In other words, it uses the
806 system's default locale rather than whatever the compiling user happens to have
807 set. If you really do want to build a source set of character tables in a
808 locale that is specified by the LC_xxx variables, you can run the dftables
809 program by hand with the -L option. For example:
811 ./dftables -L pcre_chartables.c.special
813 The first two 256-byte tables provide lower casing and case flipping functions,
814 respectively. The next table consists of three 32-byte bit maps which identify
815 digits, "word" characters, and white space, respectively. These are used when
816 building 32-byte bit maps that represent character classes for code points less
819 The final 256-byte table has bits indicating various character types, as
822 1 white space character
826 16 alphanumeric or '_'
827 128 regular expression metacharacter or binary zero
829 You should not alter the set of characters that contain the 128 bit, as that
830 will cause PCRE to malfunction.
836 The distribution should contain the files listed below. Where a file name is
837 given as pcre[16|32]_xxx it means that there are three files, one with the name
838 pcre_xxx, one with the name pcre16_xx, and a third with the name pcre32_xxx.
840 (A) Source files of the PCRE library functions and their headers:
842 dftables.c auxiliary program for building pcre_chartables.c
843 when --enable-rebuild-chartables is specified
845 pcre_chartables.c.dist a default set of character tables that assume ASCII
846 coding; used, unless --enable-rebuild-chartables is
847 specified, by copying to pcre[16]_chartables.c
850 pcre[16|32]_byte_order.c )
851 pcre[16|32]_compile.c )
852 pcre[16|32]_config.c )
853 pcre[16|32]_dfa_exec.c )
855 pcre[16|32]_fullinfo.c )
856 pcre[16|32]_get.c ) sources for the functions in the library,
857 pcre[16|32]_globals.c ) and some internal functions that they use
858 pcre[16|32]_jit_compile.c )
859 pcre[16|32]_maketables.c )
860 pcre[16|32]_newline.c )
861 pcre[16|32]_refcount.c )
862 pcre[16|32]_string_utils.c )
863 pcre[16|32]_study.c )
864 pcre[16|32]_tables.c )
866 pcre[16|32]_version.c )
867 pcre[16|32]_xclass.c )
871 pcre16_utf16_utils.c )
872 pcre16_valid_utf16.c )
873 pcre32_utf32_utils.c )
874 pcre32_valid_utf32.c )
876 pcre[16|32]_printint.c ) debugging function that is used by pcretest,
877 ) and can also be #included in pcre_compile()
879 pcre.h.in template for pcre.h when built by "configure"
880 pcreposix.h header for the external POSIX wrapper API
881 pcre_internal.h header for internal use
882 sljit/* 16 files that make up the JIT compiler
883 ucp.h header for Unicode property handling
885 config.h.in template for config.h, which is built by "configure"
887 pcrecpp.h public header file for the C++ wrapper
888 pcrecpparg.h.in template for another C++ header file
889 pcre_scanner.h public header file for C++ scanner functions
891 pcre_scanner.cc ) source for the C++ wrapper library
893 pcre_stringpiece.h.in template for pcre_stringpiece.h, the header for the
894 C++ stringpiece functions
895 pcre_stringpiece.cc source for the C++ stringpiece functions
897 (B) Source files for programs that use PCRE:
899 pcredemo.c simple demonstration of coding calls to PCRE
900 pcregrep.c source of a grep utility that uses PCRE
901 pcretest.c comprehensive test program
905 132html script to turn "man" pages into HTML
906 AUTHORS information about the author of PCRE
907 ChangeLog log of changes to the code
908 CleanTxt script to clean nroff output for txt man pages
909 Detrail script to remove trailing spaces
910 HACKING some notes about the internals of PCRE
911 INSTALL generic installation instructions
912 LICENCE conditions for the use of PCRE
913 COPYING the same, using GNU's standard name
914 Makefile.in ) template for Unix Makefile, which is built by
916 Makefile.am ) the automake input that was used to create
918 NEWS important changes in this release
919 NON-UNIX-USE the previous name for NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD
920 NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD notes on building PCRE without using autotools
921 PrepareRelease script to make preparations for "make dist"
923 RunTest a Unix shell script for running tests
924 RunGrepTest a Unix shell script for pcregrep tests
925 aclocal.m4 m4 macros (generated by "aclocal")
926 config.guess ) files used by libtool,
927 config.sub ) used only when building a shared library
928 configure a configuring shell script (built by autoconf)
929 configure.ac ) the autoconf input that was used to build
930 ) "configure" and config.h
931 depcomp ) script to find program dependencies, generated by
933 doc/*.3 man page sources for PCRE
934 doc/*.1 man page sources for pcregrep and pcretest
935 doc/index.html.src the base HTML page
936 doc/html/* HTML documentation
937 doc/pcre.txt plain text version of the man pages
938 doc/pcretest.txt plain text documentation of test program
939 doc/perltest.txt plain text documentation of Perl test program
940 install-sh a shell script for installing files
941 libpcre16.pc.in template for libpcre16.pc for pkg-config
942 libpcre32.pc.in template for libpcre32.pc for pkg-config
943 libpcre.pc.in template for libpcre.pc for pkg-config
944 libpcreposix.pc.in template for libpcreposix.pc for pkg-config
945 libpcrecpp.pc.in template for libpcrecpp.pc for pkg-config
946 ltmain.sh file used to build a libtool script
947 missing ) common stub for a few missing GNU programs while
948 ) installing, generated by automake
949 mkinstalldirs script for making install directories
950 perltest.pl Perl test program
951 pcre-config.in source of script which retains PCRE information
952 pcre_jit_test.c test program for the JIT compiler
953 pcrecpp_unittest.cc )
954 pcre_scanner_unittest.cc ) test programs for the C++ wrapper
955 pcre_stringpiece_unittest.cc )
956 testdata/testinput* test data for main library tests
957 testdata/testoutput* expected test results
958 testdata/grep* input and output for pcregrep tests
959 testdata/* other supporting test files
961 (D) Auxiliary files for cmake support
963 cmake/COPYING-CMAKE-SCRIPTS
964 cmake/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake
965 cmake/FindEditline.cmake
966 cmake/FindReadline.cmake
970 (E) Auxiliary files for VPASCAL
977 (F) Auxiliary files for building PCRE "by hand"
979 pcre.h.generic ) a version of the public PCRE header file
980 ) for use in non-"configure" environments
981 config.h.generic ) a version of config.h for use in non-"configure"
986 RunTest.bat a script for running tests under Windows
989 Email local part: ph10
990 Email domain: cam.ac.uk
991 Last updated: 17 January 2014