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