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<br><b> 27DESCRIPTION 28</b><br> 29<P> 30This function compiles a regular expression into an internal form. It is the 31same as <b>pcre_compile2()</b>, except for the absence of the <i>errorcodeptr</i> 32argument. Its arguments are: 33<pre> 34 <i>pattern</i> A zero-terminated string containing the 35 regular expression to be compiled 36 <i>options</i> Zero or more option bits 37 <i>errptr</i> Where to put an error message 38 <i>erroffset</i> Offset in pattern where error was found 39 <i>tableptr</i> Pointer to character tables, or NULL to 40 use the built-in default 41</pre> 42The option bits are: 43<pre> 44 PCRE_ANCHORED Force pattern anchoring 45 PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT Compile automatic callouts 46 PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF \R matches only CR, LF, or CRLF 47 PCRE_BSR_UNICODE \R matches all Unicode line endings 48 PCRE_CASELESS Do caseless matching 49 PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY $ not to match newline at end 50 PCRE_DOTALL . matches anything including NL 51 PCRE_DUPNAMES Allow duplicate names for subpatterns 52 PCRE_EXTENDED Ignore whitespace and # comments 53 PCRE_EXTRA PCRE extra features 54 (not much use currently) 55 PCRE_FIRSTLINE Force matching to be before newline 56 PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT JavaScript compatibility 57 PCRE_MULTILINE ^ and $ match newlines within data 58 PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY Recognize any Unicode newline sequence 59 PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF Recognize CR, LF, and CRLF as newline 60 sequences 61 PCRE_NEWLINE_CR Set CR as the newline sequence 62 PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF Set CRLF as the newline sequence 63 PCRE_NEWLINE_LF Set LF as the newline sequence 64 PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE Disable numbered capturing paren- 65 theses (named ones available) 66 PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK Do not check the pattern for UTF-8 67 validity (only relevant if 68 PCRE_UTF8 is set) 69 PCRE_UCP Use Unicode properties for \d, \w, etc. 70 PCRE_UNGREEDY Invert greediness of quantifiers 71 PCRE_UTF8 Run in UTF-8 mode 72</pre> 73PCRE must be built with UTF-8 support in order to use PCRE_UTF8 and 74PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK, and with UCP support if PCRE_UCP is used. 75</P> 76<P> 77The yield of the function is a pointer to a private data structure that 78contains the compiled pattern, or NULL if an error was detected. Note that 79compiling regular expressions with one version of PCRE for use with a different 80version is not guaranteed to work and may cause crashes. 81</P> 82<P> 83There is a complete description of the PCRE native API in the 84<a href="pcreapi.html"><b>pcreapi</b></a> 85page and a description of the POSIX API in the 86<a href="pcreposix.html"><b>pcreposix</b></a> 87page. 88<p> 89Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>. 90</p> 91