1PCRETEST(1) PCRETEST(1) 2 3 4NAME 5 pcretest - a program for testing Perl-compatible regular expressions. 6 7 8SYNOPSIS 9 10 pcretest [options] [source] [destination] 11 12 pcretest was written as a test program for the PCRE regular expression 13 library itself, but it can also be used for experimenting with regular 14 expressions. This document describes the features of the test program; 15 for details of the regular expressions themselves, see the pcrepattern 16 documentation. For details of the PCRE library function calls and their 17 options, see the pcreapi documentation. 18 19 20OPTIONS 21 22 -b Behave as if each regex has the /B (show bytecode) modifier; 23 the internal form is output after compilation. 24 25 -C Output the version number of the PCRE library, and all avail- 26 able information about the optional features that are 27 included, and then exit. 28 29 -d Behave as if each regex has the /D (debug) modifier; the 30 internal form and information about the compiled pattern is 31 output after compilation; -d is equivalent to -b -i. 32 33 -dfa Behave as if each data line contains the \D escape sequence; 34 this causes the alternative matching function, 35 pcre_dfa_exec(), to be used instead of the standard 36 pcre_exec() function (more detail is given below). 37 38 -help Output a brief summary these options and then exit. 39 40 -i Behave as if each regex has the /I modifier; information 41 about the compiled pattern is given after compilation. 42 43 -M Behave as if each data line contains the \M escape sequence; 44 this causes PCRE to discover the minimum MATCH_LIMIT and 45 MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION settings by calling pcre_exec() repeat- 46 edly with different limits. 47 48 -m Output the size of each compiled pattern after it has been 49 compiled. This is equivalent to adding /M to each regular 50 expression. For compatibility with earlier versions of 51 pcretest, -s is a synonym for -m. 52 53 -o osize Set the number of elements in the output vector that is used 54 when calling pcre_exec() or pcre_dfa_exec() to be osize. The 55 default value is 45, which is enough for 14 capturing subex- 56 pressions for pcre_exec() or 22 different matches for 57 pcre_dfa_exec(). The vector size can be changed for individ- 58 ual matching calls by including \O in the data line (see 59 below). 60 61 -p Behave as if each regex has the /P modifier; the POSIX wrap- 62 per API is used to call PCRE. None of the other options has 63 any effect when -p is set. 64 65 -q Do not output the version number of pcretest at the start of 66 execution. 67 68 -S size On Unix-like systems, set the size of the runtime stack to 69 size megabytes. 70 71 -t Run each compile, study, and match many times with a timer, 72 and output resulting time per compile or match (in millisec- 73 onds). Do not set -m with -t, because you will then get the 74 size output a zillion times, and the timing will be dis- 75 torted. You can control the number of iterations that are 76 used for timing by following -t with a number (as a separate 77 item on the command line). For example, "-t 1000" would iter- 78 ate 1000 times. The default is to iterate 500000 times. 79 80 -tm This is like -t except that it times only the matching phase, 81 not the compile or study phases. 82 83 84DESCRIPTION 85 86 If pcretest is given two filename arguments, it reads from the first 87 and writes to the second. If it is given only one filename argument, it 88 reads from that file and writes to stdout. Otherwise, it reads from 89 stdin and writes to stdout, and prompts for each line of input, using 90 "re>" to prompt for regular expressions, and "data>" to prompt for data 91 lines. 92 93 When pcretest is built, a configuration option can specify that it 94 should be linked with the libreadline library. When this is done, if 95 the input is from a terminal, it is read using the readline() function. 96 This provides line-editing and history facilities. The output from the 97 -help option states whether or not readline() will be used. 98 99 The program handles any number of sets of input on a single input file. 100 Each set starts with a regular expression, and continues with any num- 101 ber of data lines to be matched against the pattern. 102 103 Each data line is matched separately and independently. If you want to 104 do multi-line matches, you have to use the \n escape sequence (or \r or 105 \r\n, etc., depending on the newline setting) in a single line of input 106 to encode the newline sequences. There is no limit on the length of 107 data lines; the input buffer is automatically extended if it is too 108 small. 109 110 An empty line signals the end of the data lines, at which point a new 111 regular expression is read. The regular expressions are given enclosed 112 in any non-alphanumeric delimiters other than backslash, for example: 113 114 /(a|bc)x+yz/ 115 116 White space before the initial delimiter is ignored. A regular expres- 117 sion may be continued over several input lines, in which case the new- 118 line characters are included within it. It is possible to include the 119 delimiter within the pattern by escaping it, for example 120 121 /abc\/def/ 122 123 If you do so, the escape and the delimiter form part of the pattern, 124 but since delimiters are always non-alphanumeric, this does not affect 125 its interpretation. If the terminating delimiter is immediately fol- 126 lowed by a backslash, for example, 127 128 /abc/\ 129 130 then a backslash is added to the end of the pattern. This is done to 131 provide a way of testing the error condition that arises if a pattern 132 finishes with a backslash, because 133 134 /abc\/ 135 136 is interpreted as the first line of a pattern that starts with "abc/", 137 causing pcretest to read the next line as a continuation of the regular 138 expression. 139 140 141PATTERN MODIFIERS 142 143 A pattern may be followed by any number of modifiers, which are mostly 144 single characters. Following Perl usage, these are referred to below 145 as, for example, "the /i modifier", even though the delimiter of the 146 pattern need not always be a slash, and no slash is used when writing 147 modifiers. Whitespace may appear between the final pattern delimiter 148 and the first modifier, and between the modifiers themselves. 149 150 The /i, /m, /s, and /x modifiers set the PCRE_CASELESS, PCRE_MULTILINE, 151 PCRE_DOTALL, or PCRE_EXTENDED options, respectively, when pcre_com- 152 pile() is called. These four modifier letters have the same effect as 153 they do in Perl. For example: 154 155 /caseless/i 156 157 The following table shows additional modifiers for setting PCRE options 158 that do not correspond to anything in Perl: 159 160 /A PCRE_ANCHORED 161 /C PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT 162 /E PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY 163 /f PCRE_FIRSTLINE 164 /J PCRE_DUPNAMES 165 /N PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE 166 /U PCRE_UNGREEDY 167 /X PCRE_EXTRA 168 /<JS> PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT 169 /<cr> PCRE_NEWLINE_CR 170 /<lf> PCRE_NEWLINE_LF 171 /<crlf> PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF 172 /<anycrlf> PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF 173 /<any> PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY 174 /<bsr_anycrlf> PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF 175 /<bsr_unicode> PCRE_BSR_UNICODE 176 177 Those specifying line ending sequences are literal strings as shown, 178 but the letters can be in either case. This example sets multiline 179 matching with CRLF as the line ending sequence: 180 181 /^abc/m<crlf> 182 183 Details of the meanings of these PCRE options are given in the pcreapi 184 documentation. 185 186 Finding all matches in a string 187 188 Searching for all possible matches within each subject string can be 189 requested by the /g or /G modifier. After finding a match, PCRE is 190 called again to search the remainder of the subject string. The differ- 191 ence between /g and /G is that the former uses the startoffset argument 192 to pcre_exec() to start searching at a new point within the entire 193 string (which is in effect what Perl does), whereas the latter passes 194 over a shortened substring. This makes a difference to the matching 195 process if the pattern begins with a lookbehind assertion (including \b 196 or \B). 197 198 If any call to pcre_exec() in a /g or /G sequence matches an empty 199 string, the next call is done with the PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART and 200 PCRE_ANCHORED flags set in order to search for another, non-empty, 201 match at the same point. If this second match fails, the start offset 202 is advanced by one character, and the normal match is retried. This 203 imitates the way Perl handles such cases when using the /g modifier or 204 the split() function. 205 206 Other modifiers 207 208 There are yet more modifiers for controlling the way pcretest operates. 209 210 The /+ modifier requests that as well as outputting the substring that 211 matched the entire pattern, pcretest should in addition output the 212 remainder of the subject string. This is useful for tests where the 213 subject contains multiple copies of the same substring. 214 215 The /B modifier is a debugging feature. It requests that pcretest out- 216 put a representation of the compiled byte code after compilation. Nor- 217 mally this information contains length and offset values; however, if 218 /Z is also present, this data is replaced by spaces. This is a special 219 feature for use in the automatic test scripts; it ensures that the same 220 output is generated for different internal link sizes. 221 222 The /L modifier must be followed directly by the name of a locale, for 223 example, 224 225 /pattern/Lfr_FR 226 227 For this reason, it must be the last modifier. The given locale is set, 228 pcre_maketables() is called to build a set of character tables for the 229 locale, and this is then passed to pcre_compile() when compiling the 230 regular expression. Without an /L modifier, NULL is passed as the 231 tables pointer; that is, /L applies only to the expression on which it 232 appears. 233 234 The /I modifier requests that pcretest output information about the 235 compiled pattern (whether it is anchored, has a fixed first character, 236 and so on). It does this by calling pcre_fullinfo() after compiling a 237 pattern. If the pattern is studied, the results of that are also out- 238 put. 239 240 The /D modifier is a PCRE debugging feature, and is equivalent to /BI, 241 that is, both the /B and the /I modifiers. 242 243 The /F modifier causes pcretest to flip the byte order of the fields in 244 the compiled pattern that contain 2-byte and 4-byte numbers. This 245 facility is for testing the feature in PCRE that allows it to execute 246 patterns that were compiled on a host with a different endianness. This 247 feature is not available when the POSIX interface to PCRE is being 248 used, that is, when the /P pattern modifier is specified. See also the 249 section about saving and reloading compiled patterns below. 250 251 The /S modifier causes pcre_study() to be called after the expression 252 has been compiled, and the results used when the expression is matched. 253 254 The /M modifier causes the size of memory block used to hold the com- 255 piled pattern to be output. 256 257 The /P modifier causes pcretest to call PCRE via the POSIX wrapper API 258 rather than its native API. When this is done, all other modifiers 259 except /i, /m, and /+ are ignored. REG_ICASE is set if /i is present, 260 and REG_NEWLINE is set if /m is present. The wrapper functions force 261 PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY always, and PCRE_DOTALL unless REG_NEWLINE is set. 262 263 The /8 modifier causes pcretest to call PCRE with the PCRE_UTF8 option 264 set. This turns on support for UTF-8 character handling in PCRE, pro- 265 vided that it was compiled with this support enabled. This modifier 266 also causes any non-printing characters in output strings to be printed 267 using the \x{hh...} notation if they are valid UTF-8 sequences. 268 269 If the /? modifier is used with /8, it causes pcretest to call 270 pcre_compile() with the PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK option, to suppress the 271 checking of the string for UTF-8 validity. 272 273 274DATA LINES 275 276 Before each data line is passed to pcre_exec(), leading and trailing 277 whitespace is removed, and it is then scanned for \ escapes. Some of 278 these are pretty esoteric features, intended for checking out some of 279 the more complicated features of PCRE. If you are just testing "ordi- 280 nary" regular expressions, you probably don't need any of these. The 281 following escapes are recognized: 282 283 \a alarm (BEL, \x07) 284 \b backspace (\x08) 285 \e escape (\x27) 286 \f formfeed (\x0c) 287 \n newline (\x0a) 288 \qdd set the PCRE_MATCH_LIMIT limit to dd 289 (any number of digits) 290 \r carriage return (\x0d) 291 \t tab (\x09) 292 \v vertical tab (\x0b) 293 \nnn octal character (up to 3 octal digits) 294 \xhh hexadecimal character (up to 2 hex digits) 295 \x{hh...} hexadecimal character, any number of digits 296 in UTF-8 mode 297 \A pass the PCRE_ANCHORED option to pcre_exec() 298 or pcre_dfa_exec() 299 \B pass the PCRE_NOTBOL option to pcre_exec() 300 or pcre_dfa_exec() 301 \Cdd call pcre_copy_substring() for substring dd 302 after a successful match (number less than 32) 303 \Cname call pcre_copy_named_substring() for substring 304 "name" after a successful match (name termin- 305 ated by next non alphanumeric character) 306 \C+ show the current captured substrings at callout 307 time 308 \C- do not supply a callout function 309 \C!n return 1 instead of 0 when callout number n is 310 reached 311 \C!n!m return 1 instead of 0 when callout number n is 312 reached for the nth time 313 \C*n pass the number n (may be negative) as callout 314 data; this is used as the callout return value 315 \D use the pcre_dfa_exec() match function 316 \F only shortest match for pcre_dfa_exec() 317 \Gdd call pcre_get_substring() for substring dd 318 after a successful match (number less than 32) 319 \Gname call pcre_get_named_substring() for substring 320 "name" after a successful match (name termin- 321 ated by next non-alphanumeric character) 322 \L call pcre_get_substringlist() after a 323 successful match 324 \M discover the minimum MATCH_LIMIT and 325 MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION settings 326 \N pass the PCRE_NOTEMPTY option to pcre_exec() 327 or pcre_dfa_exec(); if used twice, pass the 328 PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART option 329 \Odd set the size of the output vector passed to 330 pcre_exec() to dd (any number of digits) 331 \P pass the PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT option to pcre_exec() 332 or pcre_dfa_exec(); if used twice, pass the 333 PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD option 334 \Qdd set the PCRE_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION limit to dd 335 (any number of digits) 336 \R pass the PCRE_DFA_RESTART option to pcre_dfa_exec() 337 \S output details of memory get/free calls during matching 338 \Y pass the PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE option to pcre_exec() 339 or pcre_dfa_exec() 340 \Z pass the PCRE_NOTEOL option to pcre_exec() 341 or pcre_dfa_exec() 342 \? pass the PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK option to 343 pcre_exec() or pcre_dfa_exec() 344 \>dd start the match at offset dd (any number of digits); 345 this sets the startoffset argument for pcre_exec() 346 or pcre_dfa_exec() 347 \<cr> pass the PCRE_NEWLINE_CR option to pcre_exec() 348 or pcre_dfa_exec() 349 \<lf> pass the PCRE_NEWLINE_LF option to pcre_exec() 350 or pcre_dfa_exec() 351 \<crlf> pass the PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF option to pcre_exec() 352 or pcre_dfa_exec() 353 \<anycrlf> pass the PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF option to pcre_exec() 354 or pcre_dfa_exec() 355 \<any> pass the PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY option to pcre_exec() 356 or pcre_dfa_exec() 357 358 The escapes that specify line ending sequences are literal strings, 359 exactly as shown. No more than one newline setting should be present in 360 any data line. 361 362 A backslash followed by anything else just escapes the anything else. 363 If the very last character is a backslash, it is ignored. This gives a 364 way of passing an empty line as data, since a real empty line termi- 365 nates the data input. 366 367 If \M is present, pcretest calls pcre_exec() several times, with dif- 368 ferent values in the match_limit and match_limit_recursion fields of 369 the pcre_extra data structure, until it finds the minimum numbers for 370 each parameter that allow pcre_exec() to complete. The match_limit num- 371 ber is a measure of the amount of backtracking that takes place, and 372 checking it out can be instructive. For most simple matches, the number 373 is quite small, but for patterns with very large numbers of matching 374 possibilities, it can become large very quickly with increasing length 375 of subject string. The match_limit_recursion number is a measure of how 376 much stack (or, if PCRE is compiled with NO_RECURSE, how much heap) 377 memory is needed to complete the match attempt. 378 379 When \O is used, the value specified may be higher or lower than the 380 size set by the -O command line option (or defaulted to 45); \O applies 381 only to the call of pcre_exec() for the line in which it appears. 382 383 If the /P modifier was present on the pattern, causing the POSIX wrap- 384 per API to be used, the only option-setting sequences that have any 385 effect are \B and \Z, causing REG_NOTBOL and REG_NOTEOL, respectively, 386 to be passed to regexec(). 387 388 The use of \x{hh...} to represent UTF-8 characters is not dependent on 389 the use of the /8 modifier on the pattern. It is recognized always. 390 There may be any number of hexadecimal digits inside the braces. The 391 result is from one to six bytes, encoded according to the original 392 UTF-8 rules of RFC 2279. This allows for values in the range 0 to 393 0x7FFFFFFF. Note that not all of those are valid Unicode code points, 394 or indeed valid UTF-8 characters according to the later rules in RFC 395 3629. 396 397 398THE ALTERNATIVE MATCHING FUNCTION 399 400 By default, pcretest uses the standard PCRE matching function, 401 pcre_exec() to match each data line. From release 6.0, PCRE supports an 402 alternative matching function, pcre_dfa_test(), which operates in a 403 different way, and has some restrictions. The differences between the 404 two functions are described in the pcrematching documentation. 405 406 If a data line contains the \D escape sequence, or if the command line 407 contains the -dfa option, the alternative matching function is called. 408 This function finds all possible matches at a given point. If, however, 409 the \F escape sequence is present in the data line, it stops after the 410 first match is found. This is always the shortest possible match. 411 412 413DEFAULT OUTPUT FROM PCRETEST 414 415 This section describes the output when the normal matching function, 416 pcre_exec(), is being used. 417 418 When a match succeeds, pcretest outputs the list of captured substrings 419 that pcre_exec() returns, starting with number 0 for the string that 420 matched the whole pattern. Otherwise, it outputs "No match" when the 421 return is PCRE_ERROR_NOMATCH, and "Partial match:" followed by the par- 422 tially matching substring when pcre_exec() returns PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL. 423 For any other returns, it outputs the PCRE negative error number. Here 424 is an example of an interactive pcretest run. 425 426 $ pcretest 427 PCRE version 7.0 30-Nov-2006 428 429 re> /^abc(\d+)/ 430 data> abc123 431 0: abc123 432 1: 123 433 data> xyz 434 No match 435 436 Note that unset capturing substrings that are not followed by one that 437 is set are not returned by pcre_exec(), and are not shown by pcretest. 438 In the following example, there are two capturing substrings, but when 439 the first data line is matched, the second, unset substring is not 440 shown. An "internal" unset substring is shown as "<unset>", as for the 441 second data line. 442 443 re> /(a)|(b)/ 444 data> a 445 0: a 446 1: a 447 data> b 448 0: b 449 1: <unset> 450 2: b 451 452 If the strings contain any non-printing characters, they are output as 453 \0x escapes, or as \x{...} escapes if the /8 modifier was present on 454 the pattern. See below for the definition of non-printing characters. 455 If the pattern has the /+ modifier, the output for substring 0 is fol- 456 lowed by the the rest of the subject string, identified by "0+" like 457 this: 458 459 re> /cat/+ 460 data> cataract 461 0: cat 462 0+ aract 463 464 If the pattern has the /g or /G modifier, the results of successive 465 matching attempts are output in sequence, like this: 466 467 re> /\Bi(\w\w)/g 468 data> Mississippi 469 0: iss 470 1: ss 471 0: iss 472 1: ss 473 0: ipp 474 1: pp 475 476 "No match" is output only if the first match attempt fails. 477 478 If any of the sequences \C, \G, or \L are present in a data line that 479 is successfully matched, the substrings extracted by the convenience 480 functions are output with C, G, or L after the string number instead of 481 a colon. This is in addition to the normal full list. The string length 482 (that is, the return from the extraction function) is given in paren- 483 theses after each string for \C and \G. 484 485 Note that whereas patterns can be continued over several lines (a plain 486 ">" prompt is used for continuations), data lines may not. However new- 487 lines can be included in data by means of the \n escape (or \r, \r\n, 488 etc., depending on the newline sequence setting). 489 490 491OUTPUT FROM THE ALTERNATIVE MATCHING FUNCTION 492 493 When the alternative matching function, pcre_dfa_exec(), is used (by 494 means of the \D escape sequence or the -dfa command line option), the 495 output consists of a list of all the matches that start at the first 496 point in the subject where there is at least one match. For example: 497 498 re> /(tang|tangerine|tan)/ 499 data> yellow tangerine\D 500 0: tangerine 501 1: tang 502 2: tan 503 504 (Using the normal matching function on this data finds only "tang".) 505 The longest matching string is always given first (and numbered zero). 506 After a PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL return, the output is "Partial match:", fol- 507 lowed by the partially matching substring. 508 509 If /g is present on the pattern, the search for further matches resumes 510 at the end of the longest match. For example: 511 512 re> /(tang|tangerine|tan)/g 513 data> yellow tangerine and tangy sultana\D 514 0: tangerine 515 1: tang 516 2: tan 517 0: tang 518 1: tan 519 0: tan 520 521 Since the matching function does not support substring capture, the 522 escape sequences that are concerned with captured substrings are not 523 relevant. 524 525 526RESTARTING AFTER A PARTIAL MATCH 527 528 When the alternative matching function has given the PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL 529 return, indicating that the subject partially matched the pattern, you 530 can restart the match with additional subject data by means of the \R 531 escape sequence. For example: 532 533 re> /^\d?\d(jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|jul|aug|sep|oct|nov|dec)\d\d$/ 534 data> 23ja\P\D 535 Partial match: 23ja 536 data> n05\R\D 537 0: n05 538 539 For further information about partial matching, see the pcrepartial 540 documentation. 541 542 543CALLOUTS 544 545 If the pattern contains any callout requests, pcretest's callout func- 546 tion is called during matching. This works with both matching func- 547 tions. By default, the called function displays the callout number, the 548 start and current positions in the text at the callout time, and the 549 next pattern item to be tested. For example, the output 550 551 --->pqrabcdef 552 0 ^ ^ \d 553 554 indicates that callout number 0 occurred for a match attempt starting 555 at the fourth character of the subject string, when the pointer was at 556 the seventh character of the data, and when the next pattern item was 557 \d. Just one circumflex is output if the start and current positions 558 are the same. 559 560 Callouts numbered 255 are assumed to be automatic callouts, inserted as 561 a result of the /C pattern modifier. In this case, instead of showing 562 the callout number, the offset in the pattern, preceded by a plus, is 563 output. For example: 564 565 re> /\d?[A-E]\*/C 566 data> E* 567 --->E* 568 +0 ^ \d? 569 +3 ^ [A-E] 570 +8 ^^ \* 571 +10 ^ ^ 572 0: E* 573 574 The callout function in pcretest returns zero (carry on matching) by 575 default, but you can use a \C item in a data line (as described above) 576 to change this. 577 578 Inserting callouts can be helpful when using pcretest to check compli- 579 cated regular expressions. For further information about callouts, see 580 the pcrecallout documentation. 581 582 583NON-PRINTING CHARACTERS 584 585 When pcretest is outputting text in the compiled version of a pattern, 586 bytes other than 32-126 are always treated as non-printing characters 587 are are therefore shown as hex escapes. 588 589 When pcretest is outputting text that is a matched part of a subject 590 string, it behaves in the same way, unless a different locale has been 591 set for the pattern (using the /L modifier). In this case, the 592 isprint() function to distinguish printing and non-printing characters. 593 594 595SAVING AND RELOADING COMPILED PATTERNS 596 597 The facilities described in this section are not available when the 598 POSIX inteface to PCRE is being used, that is, when the /P pattern mod- 599 ifier is specified. 600 601 When the POSIX interface is not in use, you can cause pcretest to write 602 a compiled pattern to a file, by following the modifiers with > and a 603 file name. For example: 604 605 /pattern/im >/some/file 606 607 See the pcreprecompile documentation for a discussion about saving and 608 re-using compiled patterns. 609 610 The data that is written is binary. The first eight bytes are the 611 length of the compiled pattern data followed by the length of the 612 optional study data, each written as four bytes in big-endian order 613 (most significant byte first). If there is no study data (either the 614 pattern was not studied, or studying did not return any data), the sec- 615 ond length is zero. The lengths are followed by an exact copy of the 616 compiled pattern. If there is additional study data, this follows imme- 617 diately after the compiled pattern. After writing the file, pcretest 618 expects to read a new pattern. 619 620 A saved pattern can be reloaded into pcretest by specifing < and a file 621 name instead of a pattern. The name of the file must not contain a < 622 character, as otherwise pcretest will interpret the line as a pattern 623 delimited by < characters. For example: 624 625 re> </some/file 626 Compiled regex loaded from /some/file 627 No study data 628 629 When the pattern has been loaded, pcretest proceeds to read data lines 630 in the usual way. 631 632 You can copy a file written by pcretest to a different host and reload 633 it there, even if the new host has opposite endianness to the one on 634 which the pattern was compiled. For example, you can compile on an i86 635 machine and run on a SPARC machine. 636 637 File names for saving and reloading can be absolute or relative, but 638 note that the shell facility of expanding a file name that starts with 639 a tilde (~) is not available. 640 641 The ability to save and reload files in pcretest is intended for test- 642 ing and experimentation. It is not intended for production use because 643 only a single pattern can be written to a file. Furthermore, there is 644 no facility for supplying custom character tables for use with a 645 reloaded pattern. If the original pattern was compiled with custom 646 tables, an attempt to match a subject string using a reloaded pattern 647 is likely to cause pcretest to crash. Finally, if you attempt to load 648 a file that is not in the correct format, the result is undefined. 649 650 651SEE ALSO 652 653 pcre(3), pcreapi(3), pcrecallout(3), pcrematching(3), pcrepartial(d), 654 pcrepattern(3), pcreprecompile(3). 655 656 657AUTHOR 658 659 Philip Hazel 660 University Computing Service 661 Cambridge CB2 3QH, England. 662 663 664REVISION 665 666 Last updated: 26 September 2009 667 Copyright (c) 1997-2009 University of Cambridge. 668