1<html> 2<head> 3<title>pcre_exec specification</title> 4</head> 5<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#00005A" link="#0066FF" alink="#3399FF" vlink="#2222BB"> 6<h1>pcre_exec man page</h1> 7<p> 8Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>. 9</p> 10<p> 11This page is part of the PCRE HTML documentation. It was generated automatically 12from the original man page. If there is any nonsense in it, please consult the 13man page, in case the conversion went wrong. 14<br> 15<br><b> 16SYNOPSIS 17</b><br> 18<P> 19<b>#include <pcre.h></b> 20</P> 21<P> 22<b>int pcre_exec(const pcre *<i>code</i>, const pcre_extra *<i>extra</i>,</b> 23<b>const char *<i>subject</i>, int <i>length</i>, int <i>startoffset</i>,</b> 24<b>int <i>options</i>, int *<i>ovector</i>, int <i>ovecsize</i>);</b> 25</P> 26<P> 27<b>int pcre16_exec(const pcre16 *<i>code</i>, const pcre16_extra *<i>extra</i>,</b> 28<b>PCRE_SPTR16 <i>subject</i>, int <i>length</i>, int <i>startoffset</i>,</b> 29<b>int <i>options</i>, int *<i>ovector</i>, int <i>ovecsize</i>);</b> 30</P> 31<br><b> 32DESCRIPTION 33</b><br> 34<P> 35This function matches a compiled regular expression against a given subject 36string, using a matching algorithm that is similar to Perl's. It returns 37offsets to captured substrings. Its arguments are: 38<pre> 39 <i>code</i> Points to the compiled pattern 40 <i>extra</i> Points to an associated <b>pcre[16]_extra</b> structure, 41 or is NULL 42 <i>subject</i> Points to the subject string 43 <i>length</i> Length of the subject string, in bytes 44 <i>startoffset</i> Offset in bytes in the subject at which to 45 start matching 46 <i>options</i> Option bits 47 <i>ovector</i> Points to a vector of ints for result offsets 48 <i>ovecsize</i> Number of elements in the vector (a multiple of 3) 49</pre> 50The options are: 51<pre> 52 PCRE_ANCHORED Match only at the first position 53 PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF \R matches only CR, LF, or CRLF 54 PCRE_BSR_UNICODE \R matches all Unicode line endings 55 PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY Recognize any Unicode newline sequence 56 PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF Recognize CR, LF, & CRLF as newline sequences 57 PCRE_NEWLINE_CR Recognize CR as the only newline sequence 58 PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF Recognize CRLF as the only newline sequence 59 PCRE_NEWLINE_LF Recognize LF as the only newline sequence 60 PCRE_NOTBOL Subject string is not the beginning of a line 61 PCRE_NOTEOL Subject string is not the end of a line 62 PCRE_NOTEMPTY An empty string is not a valid match 63 PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART An empty string at the start of the subject 64 is not a valid match 65 PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE Do not do "start-match" optimizations 66 PCRE_NO_UTF16_CHECK Do not check the subject for UTF-16 67 validity (only relevant if PCRE_UTF16 68 was set at compile time) 69 PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK Do not check the subject for UTF-8 70 validity (only relevant if PCRE_UTF8 71 was set at compile time) 72 PCRE_PARTIAL ) Return PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL for a partial 73 PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT ) match if no full matches are found 74 PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD Return PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL for a partial match 75 if that is found before a full match 76</pre> 77For details of partial matching, see the 78<a href="pcrepartial.html"><b>pcrepartial</b></a> 79page. A <b>pcre_extra</b> structure contains the following fields: 80<pre> 81 <i>flags</i> Bits indicating which fields are set 82 <i>study_data</i> Opaque data from <b>pcre[16]_study()</b> 83 <i>match_limit</i> Limit on internal resource use 84 <i>match_limit_recursion</i> Limit on internal recursion depth 85 <i>callout_data</i> Opaque data passed back to callouts 86 <i>tables</i> Points to character tables or is NULL 87 <i>mark</i> For passing back a *MARK pointer 88 <i>executable_jit</i> Opaque data from JIT compilation 89</pre> 90The flag bits are PCRE_EXTRA_STUDY_DATA, PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT, 91PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION, PCRE_EXTRA_CALLOUT_DATA, 92PCRE_EXTRA_TABLES, PCRE_EXTRA_MARK and PCRE_EXTRA_EXECUTABLE_JIT. 93</P> 94<P> 95There is a complete description of the PCRE native API in the 96<a href="pcreapi.html"><b>pcreapi</b></a> 97page and a description of the POSIX API in the 98<a href="pcreposix.html"><b>pcreposix</b></a> 99page. 100<p> 101Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>. 102</p> 103