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1News about PCRE releases
2------------------------
3
4Release 8.12 15-Jan-2011
5------------------------
6
7This release fixes some bugs in pcregrep, one of which caused the tests to fail
8on 64-bit big-endian systems. There are no changes to the code of the library.
9
10
11Release 8.11 10-Dec-2010
12------------------------
13
14A number of bugs in the library and in pcregrep have been fixed. As always, see
15ChangeLog for details. The following are the non-bug-fix changes:
16
17. Added --match-limit and --recursion-limit to pcregrep.
18
19. Added an optional parentheses number to the -o and --only-matching options
20  of pcregrep.
21
22. Changed the way PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD affects the matching of $, \z, \Z, \b, and
23  \B.
24
25. Added PCRE_ERROR_SHORTUTF8 to make it possible to distinguish between a
26  bad UTF-8 sequence and one that is incomplete when using PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD.
27
28. Recognize (*NO_START_OPT) at the start of a pattern to set the PCRE_NO_
29  START_OPTIMIZE option, which is now allowed at compile time
30
31
32Release 8.10 25-Jun-2010
33------------------------
34
35There are two major additions: support for (*MARK) and friends, and the option
36PCRE_UCP, which changes the behaviour of \b, \d, \s, and \w (and their
37opposites) so that they make use of Unicode properties. There are also a number
38of lesser new features, and several bugs have been fixed. A new option,
39--line-buffered, has been added to pcregrep, for use when it is connected to
40pipes.
41
42
43Release 8.02 19-Mar-2010
44------------------------
45
46Another bug-fix release.
47
48
49Release 8.01 19-Jan-2010
50------------------------
51
52This is a bug-fix release. Several bugs in the code itself and some bugs and
53infelicities in the build system have been fixed.
54
55
56Release 8.00 19-Oct-09
57----------------------
58
59Bugs have been fixed in the library and in pcregrep. There are also some
60enhancements. Restrictions on patterns used for partial matching have been
61removed, extra information is given for partial matches, the partial matching
62process has been improved, and an option to make a partial match override a
63full match is available. The "study" process has been enhanced by finding a
64lower bound matching length. Groups with duplicate numbers may now have
65duplicated names without the use of PCRE_DUPNAMES. However, they may not have
66different names. The documentation has been revised to reflect these changes.
67The version number has been expanded to 3 digits as it is clear that the rate
68of change is not slowing down.
69
70
71Release 7.9 11-Apr-09
72---------------------
73
74Mostly bugfixes and tidies with just a couple of minor functional additions.
75
76
77Release 7.8 05-Sep-08
78---------------------
79
80More bug fixes, plus a performance improvement in Unicode character property
81lookup.
82
83
84Release 7.7 07-May-08
85---------------------
86
87This is once again mainly a bug-fix release, but there are a couple of new
88features.
89
90
91Release 7.6 28-Jan-08
92---------------------
93
94The main reason for having this release so soon after 7.5 is because it fixes a
95potential buffer overflow problem in pcre_compile() when run in UTF-8 mode. In
96addition, the CMake configuration files have been brought up to date.
97
98
99Release 7.5 10-Jan-08
100---------------------
101
102This is mainly a bug-fix release. However the ability to link pcregrep with
103libz or libbz2 and the ability to link pcretest with libreadline have been
104added. Also the --line-offsets and --file-offsets options were added to
105pcregrep.
106
107
108Release 7.4 21-Sep-07
109---------------------
110
111The only change of specification is the addition of options to control whether
112\R matches any Unicode line ending (the default) or just CR, LF, and CRLF.
113Otherwise, the changes are bug fixes and a refactoring to reduce the number of
114relocations needed in a shared library. There have also been some documentation
115updates, in particular, some more information about using CMake to build PCRE
116has been added to the NON-UNIX-USE file.
117
118
119Release 7.3 28-Aug-07
120---------------------
121
122Most changes are bug fixes. Some that are not:
123
1241. There is some support for Perl 5.10's experimental "backtracking control
125   verbs" such as (*PRUNE).
126
1272. UTF-8 checking is now as per RFC 3629 instead of RFC 2279; this is more
128   restrictive in the strings it accepts.
129
1303. Checking for potential integer overflow has been made more dynamic, and as a
131   consequence there is no longer a hard limit on the size of a subpattern that
132   has a limited repeat count.
133
1344. When CRLF is a valid line-ending sequence, pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec()
135   no longer advance by two characters instead of one when an unanchored match
136   fails at CRLF if there are explicit CR or LF matches within the pattern.
137   This gets rid of some anomalous effects that previously occurred.
138
1395. Some PCRE-specific settings for varying the newline options at the start of
140   a pattern have been added.
141
142
143Release 7.2 19-Jun-07
144---------------------
145
146WARNING: saved patterns that were compiled by earlier versions of PCRE must be
147recompiled for use with 7.2 (necessitated by the addition of \K, \h, \H, \v,
148and \V).
149
150Correction to the notes for 7.1: the note about shared libraries for Windows is
151wrong. Previously, three libraries were built, but each could function
152independently. For example, the pcreposix library also included all the
153functions from the basic pcre library. The change is that the three libraries
154are no longer independent. They are like the Unix libraries. To use the
155pcreposix functions, for example, you need to link with both the pcreposix and
156the basic pcre library.
157
158Some more features from Perl 5.10 have been added:
159
160  (?-n) and (?+n) relative references for recursion and subroutines.
161
162  (?(-n) and (?(+n) relative references as conditions.
163
164  \k{name} and \g{name} are synonyms for \k<name>.
165
166  \K to reset the start of the matched string; for example, (foo)\Kbar
167  matches bar preceded by foo, but only sets bar as the matched string.
168
169  (?| introduces a group where the capturing parentheses in each alternative
170  start from the same number; for example, (?|(abc)|(xyz)) sets capturing
171  parentheses number 1 in both cases.
172
173  \h, \H, \v, \V match horizontal and vertical whitespace, respectively.
174
175
176Release 7.1 24-Apr-07
177---------------------
178
179There is only one new feature in this release: a linebreak setting of
180PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF. It is a cut-down version of PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY, which
181recognizes only CRLF, CR, and LF as linebreaks.
182
183A few bugs are fixed (see ChangeLog for details), but the major change is a
184complete re-implementation of the build system. This now has full Autotools
185support and so is now "standard" in some sense. It should help with compiling
186PCRE in a wide variety of environments.
187
188NOTE: when building shared libraries for Windows, three dlls are now built,
189called libpcre, libpcreposix, and libpcrecpp. Previously, everything was
190included in a single dll.
191
192Another important change is that the dftables auxiliary program is no longer
193compiled and run at "make" time by default. Instead, a default set of character
194tables (assuming ASCII coding) is used. If you want to use dftables to generate
195the character tables as previously, add --enable-rebuild-chartables to the
196"configure" command. You must do this if you are compiling PCRE to run on a
197system that uses EBCDIC code.
198
199There is a discussion about character tables in the README file. The default is
200not to use dftables so that that there is no problem when cross-compiling.
201
202
203Release 7.0 19-Dec-06
204---------------------
205
206This release has a new major number because there have been some internal
207upheavals to facilitate the addition of new optimizations and other facilities,
208and to make subsequent maintenance and extension easier. Compilation is likely
209to be a bit slower, but there should be no major effect on runtime performance.
210Previously compiled patterns are NOT upwards compatible with this release. If
211you have saved compiled patterns from a previous release, you will have to
212re-compile them. Important changes that are visible to users are:
213
2141. The Unicode property tables have been updated to Unicode 5.0.0, which adds
215   some more scripts.
216
2172. The option PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY causes PCRE to recognize any Unicode newline
218   sequence as a newline.
219
2203. The \R escape matches a single Unicode newline sequence as a single unit.
221
2224. New features that will appear in Perl 5.10 are now in PCRE. These include
223   alternative Perl syntax for named parentheses, and Perl syntax for
224   recursion.
225
2265. The C++ wrapper interface has been extended by the addition of a
227   QuoteMeta function and the ability to allow copy construction and
228   assignment.
229
230For a complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file.
231
232
233Release 6.7 04-Jul-06
234---------------------
235
236The main additions to this release are the ability to use the same name for
237multiple sets of parentheses, and support for CRLF line endings in both the
238library and pcregrep (and in pcretest for testing).
239
240Thanks to Ian Taylor, the stack usage for many kinds of pattern has been
241significantly reduced for certain subject strings.
242
243
244Release 6.5 01-Feb-06
245---------------------
246
247Important changes in this release:
248
2491. A number of new features have been added to pcregrep.
250
2512. The Unicode property tables have been updated to Unicode 4.1.0, and the
252   supported properties have been extended with script names such as "Arabic",
253   and the derived properties "Any" and "L&". This has necessitated a change to
254   the interal format of compiled patterns. Any saved compiled patterns that
255   use \p or \P must be recompiled.
256
2573. The specification of recursion in patterns has been changed so that all
258   recursive subpatterns are automatically treated as atomic groups. Thus, for
259   example, (?R) is treated as if it were (?>(?R)). This is necessary because
260   otherwise there are situations where recursion does not work.
261
262See the ChangeLog for a complete list of changes, which include a number of bug
263fixes and tidies.
264
265
266Release 6.0 07-Jun-05
267---------------------
268
269The release number has been increased to 6.0 because of the addition of several
270major new pieces of functionality.
271
272A new function, pcre_dfa_exec(), which implements pattern matching using a DFA
273algorithm, has been added. This has a number of advantages for certain cases,
274though it does run more slowly, and lacks the ability to capture substrings. On
275the other hand, it does find all matches, not just the first, and it works
276better for partial matching. The pcrematching man page discusses the
277differences.
278
279The pcretest program has been enhanced so that it can make use of the new
280pcre_dfa_exec() matching function and the extra features it provides.
281
282The distribution now includes a C++ wrapper library. This is built
283automatically if a C++ compiler is found. The pcrecpp man page discusses this
284interface.
285
286The code itself has been re-organized into many more files, one for each
287function, so it no longer requires everything to be linked in when static
288linkage is used. As a consequence, some internal functions have had to have
289their names exposed. These functions all have names starting with _pcre_. They
290are undocumented, and are not intended for use by outside callers.
291
292The pcregrep program has been enhanced with new functionality such as
293multiline-matching and options for output more matching context. See the
294ChangeLog for a complete list of changes to the library and the utility
295programs.
296
297
298Release 5.0 13-Sep-04
299---------------------
300
301The licence under which PCRE is released has been changed to the more
302conventional "BSD" licence.
303
304In the code, some bugs have been fixed, and there are also some major changes
305in this release (which is why I've increased the number to 5.0). Some changes
306are internal rearrangements, and some provide a number of new facilities. The
307new features are:
308
3091. There's an "automatic callout" feature that inserts callouts before every
310   item in the regex, and there's a new callout field that gives the position
311   in the pattern - useful for debugging and tracing.
312
3132. The extra_data structure can now be used to pass in a set of character
314   tables at exec time. This is useful if compiled regex are saved and re-used
315   at a later time when the tables may not be at the same address. If the
316   default internal tables are used, the pointer saved with the compiled
317   pattern is now set to NULL, which means that you don't need to do anything
318   special unless you are using custom tables.
319
3203. It is possible, with some restrictions on the content of the regex, to
321   request "partial" matching. A special return code is given if all of the
322   subject string matched part of the regex. This could be useful for testing
323   an input field as it is being typed.
324
3254. There is now some optional support for Unicode character properties, which
326   means that the patterns items such as \p{Lu} and \X can now be used. Only
327   the general category properties are supported. If PCRE is compiled with this
328   support, an additional 90K data structure is include, which increases the
329   size of the library dramatically.
330
3315. There is support for saving compiled patterns and re-using them later.
332
3336. There is support for running regular expressions that were compiled on a
334   different host with the opposite endianness.
335
3367. The pcretest program has been extended to accommodate the new features.
337
338The main internal rearrangement is that sequences of literal characters are no
339longer handled as strings. Instead, each character is handled on its own. This
340makes some UTF-8 handling easier, and makes the support of partial matching
341possible. Compiled patterns containing long literal strings will be larger as a
342result of this change; I hope that performance will not be much affected.
343
344
345Release 4.5 01-Dec-03
346---------------------
347
348Again mainly a bug-fix and tidying release, with only a couple of new features:
349
3501. It's possible now to compile PCRE so that it does not use recursive
351function calls when matching. Instead it gets memory from the heap. This slows
352things down, but may be necessary on systems with limited stacks.
353
3542. UTF-8 string checking has been tightened to reject overlong sequences and to
355check that a starting offset points to the start of a character. Failure of the
356latter returns a new error code: PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8_OFFSET.
357
3583. PCRE can now be compiled for systems that use EBCDIC code.
359
360
361Release 4.4 21-Aug-03
362---------------------
363
364This is mainly a bug-fix and tidying release. The only new feature is that PCRE
365checks UTF-8 strings for validity by default. There is an option to suppress
366this, just in case anybody wants that teeny extra bit of performance.
367
368
369Releases 4.1 - 4.3
370------------------
371
372Sorry, I forgot about updating the NEWS file for these releases. Please take a
373look at ChangeLog.
374
375
376Release 4.0 17-Feb-03
377---------------------
378
379There have been a lot of changes for the 4.0 release, adding additional
380functionality and mending bugs. Below is a list of the highlights of the new
381functionality. For full details of these features, please consult the
382documentation. For a complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file.
383
3841. Support for Perl's \Q...\E escapes.
385
3862. "Possessive quantifiers" ?+, *+, ++, and {,}+ which come from Sun's Java
387package. They provide some syntactic sugar for simple cases of "atomic
388grouping".
389
3903. Support for the \G assertion. It is true when the current matching position
391is at the start point of the match.
392
3934. A new feature that provides some of the functionality that Perl provides
394with (?{...}). The facility is termed a "callout". The way it is done in PCRE
395is for the caller to provide an optional function, by setting pcre_callout to
396its entry point. To get the function called, the regex must include (?C) at
397appropriate points.
398
3995. Support for recursive calls to individual subpatterns. This makes it really
400easy to get totally confused.
401
4026. Support for named subpatterns. The Python syntax (?P<name>...) is used to
403name a group.
404
4057. Several extensions to UTF-8 support; it is now fairly complete. There is an
406option for pcregrep to make it operate in UTF-8 mode.
407
4088. The single man page has been split into a number of separate man pages.
409These also give rise to individual HTML pages which are put in a separate
410directory. There is an index.html page that lists them all. Some hyperlinking
411between the pages has been installed.
412
413
414Release 3.5 15-Aug-01
415---------------------
416
4171. The configuring system has been upgraded to use later versions of autoconf
418and libtool. By default it builds both a shared and a static library if the OS
419supports it. You can use --disable-shared or --disable-static on the configure
420command if you want only one of them.
421
4222. The pcretest utility is now installed along with pcregrep because it is
423useful for users (to test regexs) and by doing this, it automatically gets
424relinked by libtool. The documentation has been turned into a man page, so
425there are now .1, .txt, and .html versions in /doc.
426
4273. Upgrades to pcregrep:
428   (i)   Added long-form option names like gnu grep.
429   (ii)  Added --help to list all options with an explanatory phrase.
430   (iii) Added -r, --recursive to recurse into sub-directories.
431   (iv)  Added -f, --file to read patterns from a file.
432
4334. Added --enable-newline-is-cr and --enable-newline-is-lf to the configure
434script, to force use of CR or LF instead of \n in the source. On non-Unix
435systems, the value can be set in config.h.
436
4375. The limit of 200 on non-capturing parentheses is a _nesting_ limit, not an
438absolute limit. Changed the text of the error message to make this clear, and
439likewise updated the man page.
440
4416. The limit of 99 on the number of capturing subpatterns has been removed.
442The new limit is 65535, which I hope will not be a "real" limit.
443
444
445Release 3.3 01-Aug-00
446---------------------
447
448There is some support for UTF-8 character strings. This is incomplete and
449experimental. The documentation describes what is and what is not implemented.
450Otherwise, this is just a bug-fixing release.
451
452
453Release 3.0 01-Feb-00
454---------------------
455
4561. A "configure" script is now used to configure PCRE for Unix systems. It
457builds a Makefile, a config.h file, and the pcre-config script.
458
4592. PCRE is built as a shared library by default.
460
4613. There is support for POSIX classes such as [:alpha:].
462
4635. There is an experimental recursion feature.
464
465----------------------------------------------------------------------------
466          IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSIONS BEFORE 2.00
467
468Please note that there has been a change in the API such that a larger
469ovector is required at matching time, to provide some additional workspace.
470The new man page has details. This change was necessary in order to support
471some of the new functionality in Perl 5.005.
472
473          IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSION 2.00
474
475Another (I hope this is the last!) change has been made to the API for the
476pcre_compile() function. An additional argument has been added to make it
477possible to pass over a pointer to character tables built in the current
478locale by pcre_maketables(). To use the default tables, this new arguement
479should be passed as NULL.
480
481          IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSION 2.05
482
483Yet another (and again I hope this really is the last) change has been made
484to the API for the pcre_exec() function. An additional argument has been
485added to make it possible to start the match other than at the start of the
486subject string. This is important if there are lookbehinds. The new man
487page has the details, but you just want to convert existing programs, all
488you need to do is to stick in a new fifth argument to pcre_exec(), with a
489value of zero. For example, change
490
491  pcre_exec(pattern, extra, subject, length, options, ovec, ovecsize)
492to
493  pcre_exec(pattern, extra, subject, length, 0, options, ovec, ovecsize)
494
495****
496