1<html> 2<head> 3<title>pcre_compile specification</title> 4</head> 5<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#00005A" link="#0066FF" alink="#3399FF" vlink="#2222BB"> 6<h1>pcre_compile 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>pcre *pcre_compile(const char *<i>pattern</i>, int <i>options</i>,</b> 23<b>const char **<i>errptr</i>, int *<i>erroffset</i>,</b> 24<b>const unsigned char *<i>tableptr</i>);</b> 25</P> 26<P> 27<b>pcre16 *pcre16_compile(PCRE_SPTR16 <i>pattern</i>, int <i>options</i>,</b> 28<b>const char **<i>errptr</i>, int *<i>erroffset</i>,</b> 29<b>const unsigned char *<i>tableptr</i>);</b> 30</P> 31<br><b> 32DESCRIPTION 33</b><br> 34<P> 35This function compiles a regular expression into an internal form. It is the 36same as <b>pcre[16]_compile2()</b>, except for the absence of the 37<i>errorcodeptr</i> argument. Its arguments are: 38<pre> 39 <i>pattern</i> A zero-terminated string containing the 40 regular expression to be compiled 41 <i>options</i> Zero or more option bits 42 <i>errptr</i> Where to put an error message 43 <i>erroffset</i> Offset in pattern where error was found 44 <i>tableptr</i> Pointer to character tables, or NULL to 45 use the built-in default 46</pre> 47The option bits are: 48<pre> 49 PCRE_ANCHORED Force pattern anchoring 50 PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT Compile automatic callouts 51 PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF \R matches only CR, LF, or CRLF 52 PCRE_BSR_UNICODE \R matches all Unicode line endings 53 PCRE_CASELESS Do caseless matching 54 PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY $ not to match newline at end 55 PCRE_DOTALL . matches anything including NL 56 PCRE_DUPNAMES Allow duplicate names for subpatterns 57 PCRE_EXTENDED Ignore white space and # comments 58 PCRE_EXTRA PCRE extra features 59 (not much use currently) 60 PCRE_FIRSTLINE Force matching to be before newline 61 PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT JavaScript compatibility 62 PCRE_MULTILINE ^ and $ match newlines within data 63 PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY Recognize any Unicode newline sequence 64 PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF Recognize CR, LF, and CRLF as newline 65 sequences 66 PCRE_NEWLINE_CR Set CR as the newline sequence 67 PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF Set CRLF as the newline sequence 68 PCRE_NEWLINE_LF Set LF as the newline sequence 69 PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE Disable numbered capturing paren- 70 theses (named ones available) 71 PCRE_NO_UTF16_CHECK Do not check the pattern for UTF-16 72 validity (only relevant if 73 PCRE_UTF16 is set) 74 PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK Do not check the pattern for UTF-8 75 validity (only relevant if 76 PCRE_UTF8 is set) 77 PCRE_UCP Use Unicode properties for \d, \w, etc. 78 PCRE_UNGREEDY Invert greediness of quantifiers 79 PCRE_UTF16 Run in <b>pcre16_compile()</b> UTF-16 mode 80 PCRE_UTF8 Run in <b>pcre_compile()</b> UTF-8 mode 81</pre> 82PCRE must be built with UTF support in order to use PCRE_UTF8/16 and 83PCRE_NO_UTF8/16_CHECK, and with UCP support if PCRE_UCP is used. 84</P> 85<P> 86The yield of the function is a pointer to a private data structure that 87contains the compiled pattern, or NULL if an error was detected. Note that 88compiling regular expressions with one version of PCRE for use with a different 89version is not guaranteed to work and may cause crashes. 90</P> 91<P> 92There is a complete description of the PCRE native API in the 93<a href="pcreapi.html"><b>pcreapi</b></a> 94page and a description of the POSIX API in the 95<a href="pcreposix.html"><b>pcreposix</b></a> 96page. 97<p> 98Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>. 99</p> 100