1README file for PCRE (Perl-compatible regular expression library) 2----------------------------------------------------------------- 3 4The latest release of PCRE is always available in three alternative formats 5from: 6 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 10 11There is a mailing list for discussion about the development of PCRE at 12 13 pcre-dev@exim.org 14 15Please read the NEWS file if you are upgrading from a previous release. 16The contents of this README file are: 17 18 The PCRE APIs 19 Documentation for PCRE 20 Contributions by users of PCRE 21 Building PCRE on non-Unix-like systems 22 Building PCRE without using autotools 23 Building PCRE using autotools 24 Retrieving configuration information 25 Shared libraries 26 Cross-compiling using autotools 27 Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC) 28 Using PCRE from MySQL 29 Making new tarballs 30 Testing PCRE 31 Character tables 32 File manifest 33 34 35The PCRE APIs 36------------- 37 38PCRE is written in C, and it has its own API. There are two sets of functions, 39one for the 8-bit library, which processes strings of bytes, and one for the 4016-bit library, which processes strings of 16-bit values. The distribution also 41includes a set of C++ wrapper functions (see the pcrecpp man page for details), 42courtesy of Google Inc., which can be used to call the 8-bit PCRE library from 43C++. 44 45In addition, there is a set of C wrapper functions (again, just for the 8-bit 46library) that are based on the POSIX regular expression API (see the pcreposix 47man page). These end up in the library called libpcreposix. Note that this just 48provides a POSIX calling interface to PCRE; the regular expressions themselves 49still follow Perl syntax and semantics. The POSIX API is restricted, and does 50not give full access to all of PCRE's facilities. 51 52The header file for the POSIX-style functions is called pcreposix.h. The 53official POSIX name is regex.h, but I did not want to risk possible problems 54with existing files of that name by distributing it that way. To use PCRE with 55an existing program that uses the POSIX API, pcreposix.h will have to be 56renamed or pointed at by a link. 57 58If you are using the POSIX interface to PCRE and there is already a POSIX regex 59library installed on your system, as well as worrying about the regex.h header 60file (as mentioned above), you must also take care when linking programs to 61ensure that they link with PCRE's libpcreposix library. Otherwise they may pick 62up the POSIX functions of the same name from the other library. 63 64One way of avoiding this confusion is to compile PCRE with the addition of 65-Dregcomp=PCREregcomp (and similarly for the other POSIX functions) to the 66compiler flags (CFLAGS if you are using "configure" -- see below). This has the 67effect of renaming the functions so that the names no longer clash. Of course, 68you have to do the same thing for your applications, or write them using the 69new names. 70 71 72Documentation for PCRE 73---------------------- 74 75If you install PCRE in the normal way on a Unix-like system, you will end up 76with a set of man pages whose names all start with "pcre". The one that is just 77called "pcre" lists all the others. In addition to these man pages, the PCRE 78documentation is supplied in two other forms: 79 80 1. There are files called doc/pcre.txt, doc/pcregrep.txt, and 81 doc/pcretest.txt in the source distribution. The first of these is a 82 concatenation of the text forms of all the section 3 man pages except 83 those that summarize individual functions. The other two are the text 84 forms of the section 1 man pages for the pcregrep and pcretest commands. 85 These text forms are provided for ease of scanning with text editors or 86 similar tools. They are installed in <prefix>/share/doc/pcre, where 87 <prefix> is the installation prefix (defaulting to /usr/local). 88 89 2. A set of files containing all the documentation in HTML form, hyperlinked 90 in various ways, and rooted in a file called index.html, is distributed in 91 doc/html and installed in <prefix>/share/doc/pcre/html. 92 93Users of PCRE have contributed files containing the documentation for various 94releases in CHM format. These can be found in the Contrib directory of the FTP 95site (see next section). 96 97 98Contributions by users of PCRE 99------------------------------ 100 101You can find contributions from PCRE users in the directory 102 103 ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/Contrib 104 105There is a README file giving brief descriptions of what they are. Some are 106complete in themselves; others are pointers to URLs containing relevant files. 107Some of this material is likely to be well out-of-date. Several of the earlier 108contributions provided support for compiling PCRE on various flavours of 109Windows (I myself do not use Windows). Nowadays there is more Windows support 110in the standard distribution, so these contibutions have been archived. 111 112 113Building PCRE on non-Unix-like systems 114-------------------------------------- 115 116For a non-Unix-like system, please read the comments in the file 117NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD, though if your system supports the use of "configure" and 118"make" you may be able to build PCRE using autotools in the same way as for 119many Unix-like systems. 120 121PCRE can also be configured using the GUI facility provided by CMake's 122cmake-gui command. This creates Makefiles, solution files, etc. The file 123NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD has information about CMake. 124 125PCRE has been compiled on many different operating systems. It should be 126straightforward to build PCRE on any system that has a Standard C compiler and 127library, because it uses only Standard C functions. 128 129 130Building PCRE without using autotools 131------------------------------------- 132 133The use of autotools (in particular, libtool) is problematic in some 134environments, even some that are Unix or Unix-like. See the NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD 135file for ways of building PCRE without using autotools. 136 137 138Building PCRE using autotools 139----------------------------- 140 141If you are using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC), please see the special note 142in the section entitled "Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)" below. 143 144The following instructions assume the use of the widely used "configure; make; 145make install" (autotools) process. 146 147To build PCRE on system that supports autotools, first run the "configure" 148command from the PCRE distribution directory, with your current directory set 149to the directory where you want the files to be created. This command is a 150standard GNU "autoconf" configuration script, for which generic instructions 151are supplied in the file INSTALL. 152 153Most commonly, people build PCRE within its own distribution directory, and in 154this case, on many systems, just running "./configure" is sufficient. However, 155the usual methods of changing standard defaults are available. For example: 156 157CFLAGS='-O2 -Wall' ./configure --prefix=/opt/local 158 159This command specifies that the C compiler should be run with the flags '-O2 160-Wall' instead of the default, and that "make install" should install PCRE 161under /opt/local instead of the default /usr/local. 162 163If you want to build in a different directory, just run "configure" with that 164directory as current. For example, suppose you have unpacked the PCRE source 165into /source/pcre/pcre-xxx, but you want to build it in /build/pcre/pcre-xxx: 166 167cd /build/pcre/pcre-xxx 168/source/pcre/pcre-xxx/configure 169 170PCRE is written in C and is normally compiled as a C library. However, it is 171possible to build it as a C++ library, though the provided building apparatus 172does not have any features to support this. 173 174There are some optional features that can be included or omitted from the PCRE 175library. They are also documented in the pcrebuild man page. 176 177. By default, both shared and static libraries are built. You can change this 178 by adding one of these options to the "configure" command: 179 180 --disable-shared 181 --disable-static 182 183 (See also "Shared libraries on Unix-like systems" below.) 184 185. By default, only the 8-bit library is built. If you add --enable-pcre16 to 186 the "configure" command, the 16-bit library is also built. If you want only 187 the 16-bit library, use "./configure --enable-pcre16 --disable-pcre8". 188 189. If you are building the 8-bit library and want to suppress the building of 190 the C++ wrapper library, you can add --disable-cpp to the "configure" 191 command. Otherwise, when "configure" is run without --disable-pcre8, it will 192 try to find a C++ compiler and C++ header files, and if it succeeds, it will 193 try to build the C++ wrapper. 194 195. If you want to include support for just-in-time compiling, which can give 196 large performance improvements on certain platforms, add --enable-jit to the 197 "configure" command. This support is available only for certain hardware 198 architectures. If you try to enable it on an unsupported architecture, there 199 will be a compile time error. 200 201. When JIT support is enabled, pcregrep automatically makes use of it, unless 202 you add --disable-pcregrep-jit to the "configure" command. 203 204. If you want to make use of the support for UTF-8 Unicode character strings in 205 the 8-bit library, or UTF-16 Unicode character strings in the 16-bit library, 206 you must add --enable-utf to the "configure" command. Without it, the code 207 for handling UTF-8 and UTF-16 is not included in the relevant library. Even 208 when --enable-utf is included, the use of a UTF encoding still has to be 209 enabled by an option at run time. When PCRE is compiled with this option, its 210 input can only either be ASCII or UTF-8/16, even when running on EBCDIC 211 platforms. It is not possible to use both --enable-utf and --enable-ebcdic at 212 the same time. 213 214. There are no separate options for enabling UTF-8 and UTF-16 independently 215 because that would allow ridiculous settings such as requesting UTF-16 216 support while building only the 8-bit library. However, the option 217 --enable-utf8 is retained for backwards compatibility with earlier releases 218 that did not support 16-bit character strings. It is synonymous with 219 --enable-utf. It is not possible to configure one library with UTF support 220 and the other without in the same configuration. 221 222. If, in addition to support for UTF-8/16 character strings, you want to 223 include support for the \P, \p, and \X sequences that recognize Unicode 224 character properties, you must add --enable-unicode-properties to the 225 "configure" command. This adds about 30K to the size of the library (in the 226 form of a property table); only the basic two-letter properties such as Lu 227 are supported. 228 229. You can build PCRE to recognize either CR or LF or the sequence CRLF or any 230 of the preceding, or any of the Unicode newline sequences as indicating the 231 end of a line. Whatever you specify at build time is the default; the caller 232 of PCRE can change the selection at run time. The default newline indicator 233 is a single LF character (the Unix standard). You can specify the default 234 newline indicator by adding --enable-newline-is-cr or --enable-newline-is-lf 235 or --enable-newline-is-crlf or --enable-newline-is-anycrlf or 236 --enable-newline-is-any to the "configure" command, respectively. 237 238 If you specify --enable-newline-is-cr or --enable-newline-is-crlf, some of 239 the standard tests will fail, because the lines in the test files end with 240 LF. Even if the files are edited to change the line endings, there are likely 241 to be some failures. With --enable-newline-is-anycrlf or 242 --enable-newline-is-any, many tests should succeed, but there may be some 243 failures. 244 245. By default, the sequence \R in a pattern matches any Unicode line ending 246 sequence. This is independent of the option specifying what PCRE considers to 247 be the end of a line (see above). However, the caller of PCRE can restrict \R 248 to match only CR, LF, or CRLF. You can make this the default by adding 249 --enable-bsr-anycrlf to the "configure" command (bsr = "backslash R"). 250 251. When called via the POSIX interface, PCRE uses malloc() to get additional 252 storage for processing capturing parentheses if there are more than 10 of 253 them in a pattern. You can increase this threshold by setting, for example, 254 255 --with-posix-malloc-threshold=20 256 257 on the "configure" command. 258 259. PCRE has a counter that can be set to limit the amount of resources it uses. 260 If the limit is exceeded during a match, the match fails. The default is ten 261 million. You can change the default by setting, for example, 262 263 --with-match-limit=500000 264 265 on the "configure" command. This is just the default; individual calls to 266 pcre_exec() can supply their own value. There is more discussion on the 267 pcreapi man page. 268 269. There is a separate counter that limits the depth of recursive function calls 270 during a matching process. This also has a default of ten million, which is 271 essentially "unlimited". You can change the default by setting, for example, 272 273 --with-match-limit-recursion=500000 274 275 Recursive function calls use up the runtime stack; running out of stack can 276 cause programs to crash in strange ways. There is a discussion about stack 277 sizes in the pcrestack man page. 278 279. The default maximum compiled pattern size is around 64K. You can increase 280 this by adding --with-link-size=3 to the "configure" command. In the 8-bit 281 library, PCRE then uses three bytes instead of two for offsets to different 282 parts of the compiled pattern. In the 16-bit library, --with-link-size=3 is 283 the same as --with-link-size=4, which (in both libraries) uses four-byte 284 offsets. Increasing the internal link size reduces performance. 285 286. You can build PCRE so that its internal match() function that is called from 287 pcre_exec() does not call itself recursively. Instead, it uses memory blocks 288 obtained from the heap via the special functions pcre_stack_malloc() and 289 pcre_stack_free() to save data that would otherwise be saved on the stack. To 290 build PCRE like this, use 291 292 --disable-stack-for-recursion 293 294 on the "configure" command. PCRE runs more slowly in this mode, but it may be 295 necessary in environments with limited stack sizes. This applies only to the 296 normal execution of the pcre_exec() function; if JIT support is being 297 successfully used, it is not relevant. Equally, it does not apply to 298 pcre_dfa_exec(), which does not use deeply nested recursion. There is a 299 discussion about stack sizes in the pcrestack man page. 300 301. For speed, PCRE uses four tables for manipulating and identifying characters 302 whose code point values are less than 256. By default, it uses a set of 303 tables for ASCII encoding that is part of the distribution. If you specify 304 305 --enable-rebuild-chartables 306 307 a program called dftables is compiled and run in the default C locale when 308 you obey "make". It builds a source file called pcre_chartables.c. If you do 309 not specify this option, pcre_chartables.c is created as a copy of 310 pcre_chartables.c.dist. See "Character tables" below for further information. 311 312. It is possible to compile PCRE for use on systems that use EBCDIC as their 313 character code (as opposed to ASCII) by specifying 314 315 --enable-ebcdic 316 317 This automatically implies --enable-rebuild-chartables (see above). However, 318 when PCRE is built this way, it always operates in EBCDIC. It cannot support 319 both EBCDIC and UTF-8/16. 320 321. The pcregrep program currently supports only 8-bit data files, and so 322 requires the 8-bit PCRE library. It is possible to compile pcregrep to use 323 libz and/or libbz2, in order to read .gz and .bz2 files (respectively), by 324 specifying one or both of 325 326 --enable-pcregrep-libz 327 --enable-pcregrep-libbz2 328 329 Of course, the relevant libraries must be installed on your system. 330 331. The default size of internal buffer used by pcregrep can be set by, for 332 example: 333 334 --with-pcregrep-bufsize=50K 335 336 The default value is 20K. 337 338. It is possible to compile pcretest so that it links with the libreadline 339 or libedit libraries, by specifying, respectively, 340 341 --enable-pcretest-libreadline or --enable-pcretest-libedit 342 343 If this is done, when pcretest's input is from a terminal, it reads it using 344 the readline() function. This provides line-editing and history facilities. 345 Note that libreadline is GPL-licenced, so if you distribute a binary of 346 pcretest linked in this way, there may be licensing issues. These can be 347 avoided by linking with libedit (which has a BSD licence) instead. 348 349 Enabling libreadline causes the -lreadline option to be added to the pcretest 350 build. In many operating environments with a sytem-installed readline 351 library this is sufficient. However, in some environments (e.g. if an 352 unmodified distribution version of readline is in use), it may be necessary 353 to specify something like LIBS="-lncurses" as well. This is because, to quote 354 the readline INSTALL, "Readline uses the termcap functions, but does not link 355 with the termcap or curses library itself, allowing applications which link 356 with readline the to choose an appropriate library." If you get error 357 messages about missing functions tgetstr, tgetent, tputs, tgetflag, or tgoto, 358 this is the problem, and linking with the ncurses library should fix it. 359 360The "configure" script builds the following files for the basic C library: 361 362. Makefile the makefile that builds the library 363. config.h build-time configuration options for the library 364. pcre.h the public PCRE header file 365. pcre-config script that shows the building settings such as CFLAGS 366 that were set for "configure" 367. libpcre.pc ) data for the pkg-config command 368. libpcre16.pc ) 369. libpcreposix.pc ) 370. libtool script that builds shared and/or static libraries 371 372Versions of config.h and pcre.h are distributed in the PCRE tarballs under the 373names config.h.generic and pcre.h.generic. These are provided for those who 374have to built PCRE without using "configure" or CMake. If you use "configure" 375or CMake, the .generic versions are not used. 376 377When building the 8-bit library, if a C++ compiler is found, the following 378files are also built: 379 380. libpcrecpp.pc data for the pkg-config command 381. pcrecpparg.h header file for calling PCRE via the C++ wrapper 382. pcre_stringpiece.h header for the C++ "stringpiece" functions 383 384The "configure" script also creates config.status, which is an executable 385script that can be run to recreate the configuration, and config.log, which 386contains compiler output from tests that "configure" runs. 387 388Once "configure" has run, you can run "make". This builds either or both of the 389libraries libpcre and libpcre16, and a test program called pcretest. If you 390enabled JIT support with --enable-jit, a test program called pcre_jit_test is 391built as well. 392 393If the 8-bit library is built, libpcreposix and the pcregrep command are also 394built, and if a C++ compiler was found on your system, and you did not disable 395it with --disable-cpp, "make" builds the C++ wrapper library, which is called 396libpcrecpp, as well as some test programs called pcrecpp_unittest, 397pcre_scanner_unittest, and pcre_stringpiece_unittest. 398 399The command "make check" runs all the appropriate tests. Details of the PCRE 400tests are given below in a separate section of this document. 401 402You can use "make install" to install PCRE into live directories on your 403system. The following are installed (file names are all relative to the 404<prefix> that is set when "configure" is run): 405 406 Commands (bin): 407 pcretest 408 pcregrep (if 8-bit support is enabled) 409 pcre-config 410 411 Libraries (lib): 412 libpcre16 (if 16-bit support is enabled) 413 libpcre (if 8-bit support is enabled) 414 libpcreposix (if 8-bit support is enabled) 415 libpcrecpp (if 8-bit and C++ support is enabled) 416 417 Configuration information (lib/pkgconfig): 418 libpcre16.pc 419 libpcre.pc 420 libpcreposix.pc 421 libpcrecpp.pc (if C++ support is enabled) 422 423 Header files (include): 424 pcre.h 425 pcreposix.h 426 pcre_scanner.h ) 427 pcre_stringpiece.h ) if C++ support is enabled 428 pcrecpp.h ) 429 pcrecpparg.h ) 430 431 Man pages (share/man/man{1,3}): 432 pcregrep.1 433 pcretest.1 434 pcre-config.1 435 pcre.3 436 pcre*.3 (lots more pages, all starting "pcre") 437 438 HTML documentation (share/doc/pcre/html): 439 index.html 440 *.html (lots more pages, hyperlinked from index.html) 441 442 Text file documentation (share/doc/pcre): 443 AUTHORS 444 COPYING 445 ChangeLog 446 LICENCE 447 NEWS 448 README 449 pcre.txt (a concatenation of the man(3) pages) 450 pcretest.txt the pcretest man page 451 pcregrep.txt the pcregrep man page 452 pcre-config.txt the pcre-config man page 453 454If you want to remove PCRE from your system, you can run "make uninstall". 455This removes all the files that "make install" installed. However, it does not 456remove any directories, because these are often shared with other programs. 457 458 459Retrieving configuration information 460------------------------------------ 461 462Running "make install" installs the command pcre-config, which can be used to 463recall information about the PCRE configuration and installation. For example: 464 465 pcre-config --version 466 467prints the version number, and 468 469 pcre-config --libs 470 471outputs information about where the library is installed. This command can be 472included in makefiles for programs that use PCRE, saving the programmer from 473having to remember too many details. 474 475The pkg-config command is another system for saving and retrieving information 476about installed libraries. Instead of separate commands for each library, a 477single command is used. For example: 478 479 pkg-config --cflags pcre 480 481The data is held in *.pc files that are installed in a directory called 482<prefix>/lib/pkgconfig. 483 484 485Shared libraries 486---------------- 487 488The default distribution builds PCRE as shared libraries and static libraries, 489as long as the operating system supports shared libraries. Shared library 490support relies on the "libtool" script which is built as part of the 491"configure" process. 492 493The libtool script is used to compile and link both shared and static 494libraries. They are placed in a subdirectory called .libs when they are newly 495built. The programs pcretest and pcregrep are built to use these uninstalled 496libraries (by means of wrapper scripts in the case of shared libraries). When 497you use "make install" to install shared libraries, pcregrep and pcretest are 498automatically re-built to use the newly installed shared libraries before being 499installed themselves. However, the versions left in the build directory still 500use the uninstalled libraries. 501 502To build PCRE using static libraries only you must use --disable-shared when 503configuring it. For example: 504 505./configure --prefix=/usr/gnu --disable-shared 506 507Then run "make" in the usual way. Similarly, you can use --disable-static to 508build only shared libraries. 509 510 511Cross-compiling using autotools 512------------------------------- 513 514You can specify CC and CFLAGS in the normal way to the "configure" command, in 515order to cross-compile PCRE for some other host. However, you should NOT 516specify --enable-rebuild-chartables, because if you do, the dftables.c source 517file is compiled and run on the local host, in order to generate the inbuilt 518character tables (the pcre_chartables.c file). This will probably not work, 519because dftables.c needs to be compiled with the local compiler, not the cross 520compiler. 521 522When --enable-rebuild-chartables is not specified, pcre_chartables.c is created 523by making a copy of pcre_chartables.c.dist, which is a default set of tables 524that assumes ASCII code. Cross-compiling with the default tables should not be 525a problem. 526 527If you need to modify the character tables when cross-compiling, you should 528move pcre_chartables.c.dist out of the way, then compile dftables.c by hand and 529run it on the local host to make a new version of pcre_chartables.c.dist. 530Then when you cross-compile PCRE this new version of the tables will be used. 531 532 533Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC) 534---------------------------------- 535 536Unless C++ support is disabled by specifying the "--disable-cpp" option of the 537"configure" script, you must include the "-AA" option in the CXXFLAGS 538environment variable in order for the C++ components to compile correctly. 539 540Also, note that the aCC compiler on PA-RISC platforms may have a defect whereby 541needed libraries fail to get included when specifying the "-AA" compiler 542option. If you experience unresolved symbols when linking the C++ programs, 543use the workaround of specifying the following environment variable prior to 544running the "configure" script: 545 546 CXXLDFLAGS="-lstd_v2 -lCsup_v2" 547 548 549Using Sun's compilers for Solaris 550--------------------------------- 551 552A user reports that the following configurations work on Solaris 9 sparcv9 and 553Solaris 9 x86 (32-bit): 554 555 Solaris 9 sparcv9: ./configure --disable-cpp CC=/bin/cc CFLAGS="-m64 -g" 556 Solaris 9 x86: ./configure --disable-cpp CC=/bin/cc CFLAGS="-g" 557 558 559Using PCRE from MySQL 560--------------------- 561 562On systems where both PCRE and MySQL are installed, it is possible to make use 563of PCRE from within MySQL, as an alternative to the built-in pattern matching. 564There is a web page that tells you how to do this: 565 566 http://www.mysqludf.org/lib_mysqludf_preg/index.php 567 568 569Making new tarballs 570------------------- 571 572The command "make dist" creates three PCRE tarballs, in tar.gz, tar.bz2, and 573zip formats. The command "make distcheck" does the same, but then does a trial 574build of the new distribution to ensure that it works. 575 576If you have modified any of the man page sources in the doc directory, you 577should first run the PrepareRelease script before making a distribution. This 578script creates the .txt and HTML forms of the documentation from the man pages. 579 580 581Testing PCRE 582------------ 583 584To test the basic PCRE library on a Unix-like system, run the RunTest script. 585There is another script called RunGrepTest that tests the options of the 586pcregrep command. If the C++ wrapper library is built, three test programs 587called pcrecpp_unittest, pcre_scanner_unittest, and pcre_stringpiece_unittest 588are also built. When JIT support is enabled, another test program called 589pcre_jit_test is built. 590 591Both the scripts and all the program tests are run if you obey "make check" or 592"make test". For other environments, see the instructions in 593NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD. 594 595The RunTest script runs the pcretest test program (which is documented in its 596own man page) on each of the relevant testinput files in the testdata 597directory, and compares the output with the contents of the corresponding 598testoutput files. Some tests are relevant only when certain build-time options 599were selected. For example, the tests for UTF-8/16 support are run only if 600--enable-utf was used. RunTest outputs a comment when it skips a test. 601 602Many of the tests that are not skipped are run up to three times. The second 603run forces pcre_study() to be called for all patterns except for a few in some 604tests that are marked "never study" (see the pcretest program for how this is 605done). If JIT support is available, the non-DFA tests are run a third time, 606this time with a forced pcre_study() with the PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE option. 607 608When both 8-bit and 16-bit support is enabled, the entire set of tests is run 609twice, once for each library. If you want to run just one set of tests, call 610RunTest with either the -8 or -16 option. 611 612RunTest uses a file called testtry to hold the main output from pcretest. 613Other files whose names begin with "test" are used as working files in some 614tests. To run pcretest on just one or more specific test files, give their 615numbers as arguments to RunTest, for example: 616 617 RunTest 2 7 11 618 619You can also call RunTest with the single argument "list" to cause it to output 620a list of tests. 621 622The first test file can be fed directly into the perltest.pl script to check 623that Perl gives the same results. The only difference you should see is in the 624first few lines, where the Perl version is given instead of the PCRE version. 625 626The second set of tests check pcre_fullinfo(), pcre_study(), 627pcre_copy_substring(), pcre_get_substring(), pcre_get_substring_list(), error 628detection, and run-time flags that are specific to PCRE, as well as the POSIX 629wrapper API. It also uses the debugging flags to check some of the internals of 630pcre_compile(). 631 632If you build PCRE with a locale setting that is not the standard C locale, the 633character tables may be different (see next paragraph). In some cases, this may 634cause failures in the second set of tests. For example, in a locale where the 635isprint() function yields TRUE for characters in the range 128-255, the use of 636[:isascii:] inside a character class defines a different set of characters, and 637this shows up in this test as a difference in the compiled code, which is being 638listed for checking. Where the comparison test output contains [\x00-\x7f] the 639test will contain [\x00-\xff], and similarly in some other cases. This is not a 640bug in PCRE. 641 642The third set of tests checks pcre_maketables(), the facility for building a 643set of character tables for a specific locale and using them instead of the 644default tables. The tests make use of the "fr_FR" (French) locale. Before 645running the test, the script checks for the presence of this locale by running 646the "locale" command. If that command fails, or if it doesn't include "fr_FR" 647in the list of available locales, the third test cannot be run, and a comment 648is output to say why. If running this test produces instances of the error 649 650 ** Failed to set locale "fr_FR" 651 652in the comparison output, it means that locale is not available on your system, 653despite being listed by "locale". This does not mean that PCRE is broken. 654 655[If you are trying to run this test on Windows, you may be able to get it to 656work by changing "fr_FR" to "french" everywhere it occurs. Alternatively, use 657RunTest.bat. The version of RunTest.bat included with PCRE 7.4 and above uses 658Windows versions of test 2. More info on using RunTest.bat is included in the 659document entitled NON-UNIX-USE.] 660 661The fourth and fifth tests check the UTF-8/16 support and error handling and 662internal UTF features of PCRE that are not relevant to Perl, respectively. The 663sixth and seventh tests do the same for Unicode character properties support. 664 665The eighth, ninth, and tenth tests check the pcre_dfa_exec() alternative 666matching function, in non-UTF-8/16 mode, UTF-8/16 mode, and UTF-8/16 mode with 667Unicode property support, respectively. 668 669The eleventh test checks some internal offsets and code size features; it is 670run only when the default "link size" of 2 is set (in other cases the sizes 671change) and when Unicode property support is enabled. 672 673The twelfth test is run only when JIT support is available, and the thirteenth 674test is run only when JIT support is not available. They test some JIT-specific 675features such as information output from pcretest about JIT compilation. 676 677The fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth tests are run only in 8-bit mode, and 678the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth tests are run only in 16-bit mode. 679These are tests that generate different output in the two modes. They are for 680general cases, UTF-8/16 support, and Unicode property support, respectively. 681 682The twentieth test is run only in 16-bit mode. It tests some specific 16-bit 683features of the DFA matching engine. 684 685The twenty-first and twenty-second tests are run only in 16-bit mode, when the 686link size is set to 2. They test reloading pre-compiled patterns. 687 688 689Character tables 690---------------- 691 692For speed, PCRE uses four tables for manipulating and identifying characters 693whose code point values are less than 256. The final argument of the 694pcre_compile() function is a pointer to a block of memory containing the 695concatenated tables. A call to pcre_maketables() can be used to generate a set 696of tables in the current locale. If the final argument for pcre_compile() is 697passed as NULL, a set of default tables that is built into the binary is used. 698 699The source file called pcre_chartables.c contains the default set of tables. By 700default, this is created as a copy of pcre_chartables.c.dist, which contains 701tables for ASCII coding. However, if --enable-rebuild-chartables is specified 702for ./configure, a different version of pcre_chartables.c is built by the 703program dftables (compiled from dftables.c), which uses the ANSI C character 704handling functions such as isalnum(), isalpha(), isupper(), islower(), etc. to 705build the table sources. This means that the default C locale which is set for 706your system will control the contents of these default tables. You can change 707the default tables by editing pcre_chartables.c and then re-building PCRE. If 708you do this, you should take care to ensure that the file does not get 709automatically re-generated. The best way to do this is to move 710pcre_chartables.c.dist out of the way and replace it with your customized 711tables. 712 713When the dftables program is run as a result of --enable-rebuild-chartables, 714it uses the default C locale that is set on your system. It does not pay 715attention to the LC_xxx environment variables. In other words, it uses the 716system's default locale rather than whatever the compiling user happens to have 717set. If you really do want to build a source set of character tables in a 718locale that is specified by the LC_xxx variables, you can run the dftables 719program by hand with the -L option. For example: 720 721 ./dftables -L pcre_chartables.c.special 722 723The first two 256-byte tables provide lower casing and case flipping functions, 724respectively. The next table consists of three 32-byte bit maps which identify 725digits, "word" characters, and white space, respectively. These are used when 726building 32-byte bit maps that represent character classes for code points less 727than 256. 728 729The final 256-byte table has bits indicating various character types, as 730follows: 731 732 1 white space character 733 2 letter 734 4 decimal digit 735 8 hexadecimal digit 736 16 alphanumeric or '_' 737 128 regular expression metacharacter or binary zero 738 739You should not alter the set of characters that contain the 128 bit, as that 740will cause PCRE to malfunction. 741 742 743File manifest 744------------- 745 746The distribution should contain the files listed below. Where a file name is 747given as pcre[16]_xxx it means that there are two files, one with the name 748pcre_xxx and the other with the name pcre16_xxx. 749 750(A) Source files of the PCRE library functions and their headers: 751 752 dftables.c auxiliary program for building pcre_chartables.c 753 when --enable-rebuild-chartables is specified 754 755 pcre_chartables.c.dist a default set of character tables that assume ASCII 756 coding; used, unless --enable-rebuild-chartables is 757 specified, by copying to pcre[16]_chartables.c 758 759 pcreposix.c ) 760 pcre[16]_byte_order.c ) 761 pcre[16]_compile.c ) 762 pcre[16]_config.c ) 763 pcre[16]_dfa_exec.c ) 764 pcre[16]_exec.c ) 765 pcre[16]_fullinfo.c ) 766 pcre[16]_get.c ) sources for the functions in the library, 767 pcre[16]_globals.c ) and some internal functions that they use 768 pcre[16]_jit_compile.c ) 769 pcre[16]_maketables.c ) 770 pcre[16]_newline.c ) 771 pcre[16]_refcount.c ) 772 pcre[16]_string_utils.c ) 773 pcre[16]_study.c ) 774 pcre[16]_tables.c ) 775 pcre[16]_ucd.c ) 776 pcre[16]_version.c ) 777 pcre[16]_xclass.c ) 778 pcre_ord2utf8.c ) 779 pcre_valid_utf8.c ) 780 pcre16_ord2utf16.c ) 781 pcre16_utf16_utils.c ) 782 pcre16_valid_utf16.c ) 783 784 pcre[16]_printint.c ) debugging function that is used by pcretest, 785 ) and can also be #included in pcre_compile() 786 787 pcre.h.in template for pcre.h when built by "configure" 788 pcreposix.h header for the external POSIX wrapper API 789 pcre_internal.h header for internal use 790 sljit/* 16 files that make up the JIT compiler 791 ucp.h header for Unicode property handling 792 793 config.h.in template for config.h, which is built by "configure" 794 795 pcrecpp.h public header file for the C++ wrapper 796 pcrecpparg.h.in template for another C++ header file 797 pcre_scanner.h public header file for C++ scanner functions 798 pcrecpp.cc ) 799 pcre_scanner.cc ) source for the C++ wrapper library 800 801 pcre_stringpiece.h.in template for pcre_stringpiece.h, the header for the 802 C++ stringpiece functions 803 pcre_stringpiece.cc source for the C++ stringpiece functions 804 805(B) Source files for programs that use PCRE: 806 807 pcredemo.c simple demonstration of coding calls to PCRE 808 pcregrep.c source of a grep utility that uses PCRE 809 pcretest.c comprehensive test program 810 811(C) Auxiliary files: 812 813 132html script to turn "man" pages into HTML 814 AUTHORS information about the author of PCRE 815 ChangeLog log of changes to the code 816 CleanTxt script to clean nroff output for txt man pages 817 Detrail script to remove trailing spaces 818 HACKING some notes about the internals of PCRE 819 INSTALL generic installation instructions 820 LICENCE conditions for the use of PCRE 821 COPYING the same, using GNU's standard name 822 Makefile.in ) template for Unix Makefile, which is built by 823 ) "configure" 824 Makefile.am ) the automake input that was used to create 825 ) Makefile.in 826 NEWS important changes in this release 827 NON-UNIX-USE the previous name for NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD 828 NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD notes on building PCRE without using autotools 829 PrepareRelease script to make preparations for "make dist" 830 README this file 831 RunTest a Unix shell script for running tests 832 RunGrepTest a Unix shell script for pcregrep tests 833 aclocal.m4 m4 macros (generated by "aclocal") 834 config.guess ) files used by libtool, 835 config.sub ) used only when building a shared library 836 configure a configuring shell script (built by autoconf) 837 configure.ac ) the autoconf input that was used to build 838 ) "configure" and config.h 839 depcomp ) script to find program dependencies, generated by 840 ) automake 841 doc/*.3 man page sources for PCRE 842 doc/*.1 man page sources for pcregrep and pcretest 843 doc/index.html.src the base HTML page 844 doc/html/* HTML documentation 845 doc/pcre.txt plain text version of the man pages 846 doc/pcretest.txt plain text documentation of test program 847 doc/perltest.txt plain text documentation of Perl test program 848 install-sh a shell script for installing files 849 libpcre16.pc.in template for libpcre16.pc for pkg-config 850 libpcre.pc.in template for libpcre.pc for pkg-config 851 libpcreposix.pc.in template for libpcreposix.pc for pkg-config 852 libpcrecpp.pc.in template for libpcrecpp.pc for pkg-config 853 ltmain.sh file used to build a libtool script 854 missing ) common stub for a few missing GNU programs while 855 ) installing, generated by automake 856 mkinstalldirs script for making install directories 857 perltest.pl Perl test program 858 pcre-config.in source of script which retains PCRE information 859 pcre_jit_test.c test program for the JIT compiler 860 pcrecpp_unittest.cc ) 861 pcre_scanner_unittest.cc ) test programs for the C++ wrapper 862 pcre_stringpiece_unittest.cc ) 863 testdata/testinput* test data for main library tests 864 testdata/testoutput* expected test results 865 testdata/grep* input and output for pcregrep tests 866 testdata/* other supporting test files 867 868(D) Auxiliary files for cmake support 869 870 cmake/COPYING-CMAKE-SCRIPTS 871 cmake/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake 872 cmake/FindEditline.cmake 873 cmake/FindReadline.cmake 874 CMakeLists.txt 875 config-cmake.h.in 876 877(E) Auxiliary files for VPASCAL 878 879 makevp.bat 880 makevp_c.txt 881 makevp_l.txt 882 pcregexp.pas 883 884(F) Auxiliary files for building PCRE "by hand" 885 886 pcre.h.generic ) a version of the public PCRE header file 887 ) for use in non-"configure" environments 888 config.h.generic ) a version of config.h for use in non-"configure" 889 ) environments 890 891(F) Miscellaneous 892 893 RunTest.bat a script for running tests under Windows 894 895Philip Hazel 896Email local part: ph10 897Email domain: cam.ac.uk 898Last updated: 18 June 2012 899