1<html> 2<head> 3<title>pcrecpp specification</title> 4</head> 5<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#00005A" link="#0066FF" alink="#3399FF" vlink="#2222BB"> 6<h1>pcrecpp 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<ul> 16<li><a name="TOC1" href="#SEC1">SYNOPSIS OF C++ WRAPPER</a> 17<li><a name="TOC2" href="#SEC2">DESCRIPTION</a> 18<li><a name="TOC3" href="#SEC3">MATCHING INTERFACE</a> 19<li><a name="TOC4" href="#SEC4">QUOTING METACHARACTERS</a> 20<li><a name="TOC5" href="#SEC5">PARTIAL MATCHES</a> 21<li><a name="TOC6" href="#SEC6">UTF-8 AND THE MATCHING INTERFACE</a> 22<li><a name="TOC7" href="#SEC7">PASSING MODIFIERS TO THE REGULAR EXPRESSION ENGINE</a> 23<li><a name="TOC8" href="#SEC8">SCANNING TEXT INCREMENTALLY</a> 24<li><a name="TOC9" href="#SEC9">PARSING HEX/OCTAL/C-RADIX NUMBERS</a> 25<li><a name="TOC10" href="#SEC10">REPLACING PARTS OF STRINGS</a> 26<li><a name="TOC11" href="#SEC11">AUTHOR</a> 27<li><a name="TOC12" href="#SEC12">REVISION</a> 28</ul> 29<br><a name="SEC1" href="#TOC1">SYNOPSIS OF C++ WRAPPER</a><br> 30<P> 31<b>#include <pcrecpp.h></b> 32</P> 33<br><a name="SEC2" href="#TOC1">DESCRIPTION</a><br> 34<P> 35The C++ wrapper for PCRE was provided by Google Inc. Some additional 36functionality was added by Giuseppe Maxia. This brief man page was constructed 37from the notes in the <i>pcrecpp.h</i> file, which should be consulted for 38further details. Note that the C++ wrapper supports only the original 8-bit 39PCRE library. There is no 16-bit or 32-bit support at present. 40</P> 41<br><a name="SEC3" href="#TOC1">MATCHING INTERFACE</a><br> 42<P> 43The "FullMatch" operation checks that supplied text matches a supplied pattern 44exactly. If pointer arguments are supplied, it copies matched sub-strings that 45match sub-patterns into them. 46<pre> 47 Example: successful match 48 pcrecpp::RE re("h.*o"); 49 re.FullMatch("hello"); 50 51 Example: unsuccessful match (requires full match): 52 pcrecpp::RE re("e"); 53 !re.FullMatch("hello"); 54 55 Example: creating a temporary RE object: 56 pcrecpp::RE("h.*o").FullMatch("hello"); 57</pre> 58You can pass in a "const char*" or a "string" for "text". The examples below 59tend to use a const char*. You can, as in the different examples above, store 60the RE object explicitly in a variable or use a temporary RE object. The 61examples below use one mode or the other arbitrarily. Either could correctly be 62used for any of these examples. 63</P> 64<P> 65You must supply extra pointer arguments to extract matched subpieces. 66<pre> 67 Example: extracts "ruby" into "s" and 1234 into "i" 68 int i; 69 string s; 70 pcrecpp::RE re("(\\w+):(\\d+)"); 71 re.FullMatch("ruby:1234", &s, &i); 72 73 Example: does not try to extract any extra sub-patterns 74 re.FullMatch("ruby:1234", &s); 75 76 Example: does not try to extract into NULL 77 re.FullMatch("ruby:1234", NULL, &i); 78 79 Example: integer overflow causes failure 80 !re.FullMatch("ruby:1234567891234", NULL, &i); 81 82 Example: fails because there aren't enough sub-patterns: 83 !pcrecpp::RE("\\w+:\\d+").FullMatch("ruby:1234", &s); 84 85 Example: fails because string cannot be stored in integer 86 !pcrecpp::RE("(.*)").FullMatch("ruby", &i); 87</pre> 88The provided pointer arguments can be pointers to any scalar numeric 89type, or one of: 90<pre> 91 string (matched piece is copied to string) 92 StringPiece (StringPiece is mutated to point to matched piece) 93 T (where "bool T::ParseFrom(const char*, int)" exists) 94 NULL (the corresponding matched sub-pattern is not copied) 95</pre> 96The function returns true iff all of the following conditions are satisfied: 97<pre> 98 a. "text" matches "pattern" exactly; 99 100 b. The number of matched sub-patterns is >= number of supplied 101 pointers; 102 103 c. The "i"th argument has a suitable type for holding the 104 string captured as the "i"th sub-pattern. If you pass in 105 void * NULL for the "i"th argument, or a non-void * NULL 106 of the correct type, or pass fewer arguments than the 107 number of sub-patterns, "i"th captured sub-pattern is 108 ignored. 109</pre> 110CAVEAT: An optional sub-pattern that does not exist in the matched 111string is assigned the empty string. Therefore, the following will 112return false (because the empty string is not a valid number): 113<pre> 114 int number; 115 pcrecpp::RE::FullMatch("abc", "[a-z]+(\\d+)?", &number); 116</pre> 117The matching interface supports at most 16 arguments per call. 118If you need more, consider using the more general interface 119<b>pcrecpp::RE::DoMatch</b>. See <b>pcrecpp.h</b> for the signature for 120<b>DoMatch</b>. 121</P> 122<P> 123NOTE: Do not use <b>no_arg</b>, which is used internally to mark the end of a 124list of optional arguments, as a placeholder for missing arguments, as this can 125lead to segfaults. 126</P> 127<br><a name="SEC4" href="#TOC1">QUOTING METACHARACTERS</a><br> 128<P> 129You can use the "QuoteMeta" operation to insert backslashes before all 130potentially meaningful characters in a string. The returned string, used as a 131regular expression, will exactly match the original string. 132<pre> 133 Example: 134 string quoted = RE::QuoteMeta(unquoted); 135</pre> 136Note that it's legal to escape a character even if it has no special meaning in 137a regular expression -- so this function does that. (This also makes it 138identical to the perl function of the same name; see "perldoc -f quotemeta".) 139For example, "1.5-2.0?" becomes "1\.5\-2\.0\?". 140</P> 141<br><a name="SEC5" href="#TOC1">PARTIAL MATCHES</a><br> 142<P> 143You can use the "PartialMatch" operation when you want the pattern 144to match any substring of the text. 145<pre> 146 Example: simple search for a string: 147 pcrecpp::RE("ell").PartialMatch("hello"); 148 149 Example: find first number in a string: 150 int number; 151 pcrecpp::RE re("(\\d+)"); 152 re.PartialMatch("x*100 + 20", &number); 153 assert(number == 100); 154</PRE> 155</P> 156<br><a name="SEC6" href="#TOC1">UTF-8 AND THE MATCHING INTERFACE</a><br> 157<P> 158By default, pattern and text are plain text, one byte per character. The UTF8 159flag, passed to the constructor, causes both pattern and string to be treated 160as UTF-8 text, still a byte stream but potentially multiple bytes per 161character. In practice, the text is likelier to be UTF-8 than the pattern, but 162the match returned may depend on the UTF8 flag, so always use it when matching 163UTF8 text. For example, "." will match one byte normally but with UTF8 set may 164match up to three bytes of a multi-byte character. 165<pre> 166 Example: 167 pcrecpp::RE_Options options; 168 options.set_utf8(); 169 pcrecpp::RE re(utf8_pattern, options); 170 re.FullMatch(utf8_string); 171 172 Example: using the convenience function UTF8(): 173 pcrecpp::RE re(utf8_pattern, pcrecpp::UTF8()); 174 re.FullMatch(utf8_string); 175</pre> 176NOTE: The UTF8 flag is ignored if pcre was not configured with the 177<pre> 178 --enable-utf8 flag. 179</PRE> 180</P> 181<br><a name="SEC7" href="#TOC1">PASSING MODIFIERS TO THE REGULAR EXPRESSION ENGINE</a><br> 182<P> 183PCRE defines some modifiers to change the behavior of the regular expression 184engine. The C++ wrapper defines an auxiliary class, RE_Options, as a vehicle to 185pass such modifiers to a RE class. Currently, the following modifiers are 186supported: 187<pre> 188 modifier description Perl corresponding 189 190 PCRE_CASELESS case insensitive match /i 191 PCRE_MULTILINE multiple lines match /m 192 PCRE_DOTALL dot matches newlines /s 193 PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY $ matches only at end N/A 194 PCRE_EXTRA strict escape parsing N/A 195 PCRE_EXTENDED ignore white spaces /x 196 PCRE_UTF8 handles UTF8 chars built-in 197 PCRE_UNGREEDY reverses * and *? N/A 198 PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE disables capturing parens N/A (*) 199</pre> 200(*) Both Perl and PCRE allow non capturing parentheses by means of the 201"?:" modifier within the pattern itself. e.g. (?:ab|cd) does not 202capture, while (ab|cd) does. 203</P> 204<P> 205For a full account on how each modifier works, please check the 206PCRE API reference page. 207</P> 208<P> 209For each modifier, there are two member functions whose name is made 210out of the modifier in lowercase, without the "PCRE_" prefix. For 211instance, PCRE_CASELESS is handled by 212<pre> 213 bool caseless() 214</pre> 215which returns true if the modifier is set, and 216<pre> 217 RE_Options & set_caseless(bool) 218</pre> 219which sets or unsets the modifier. Moreover, PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT can be 220accessed through the <b>set_match_limit()</b> and <b>match_limit()</b> member 221functions. Setting <i>match_limit</i> to a non-zero value will limit the 222execution of pcre to keep it from doing bad things like blowing the stack or 223taking an eternity to return a result. A value of 5000 is good enough to stop 224stack blowup in a 2MB thread stack. Setting <i>match_limit</i> to zero disables 225match limiting. Alternatively, you can call <b>match_limit_recursion()</b> 226which uses PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION to limit how much PCRE 227recurses. <b>match_limit()</b> limits the number of matches PCRE does; 228<b>match_limit_recursion()</b> limits the depth of internal recursion, and 229therefore the amount of stack that is used. 230</P> 231<P> 232Normally, to pass one or more modifiers to a RE class, you declare 233a <i>RE_Options</i> object, set the appropriate options, and pass this 234object to a RE constructor. Example: 235<pre> 236 RE_Options opt; 237 opt.set_caseless(true); 238 if (RE("HELLO", opt).PartialMatch("hello world")) ... 239</pre> 240RE_options has two constructors. The default constructor takes no arguments and 241creates a set of flags that are off by default. The optional parameter 242<i>option_flags</i> is to facilitate transfer of legacy code from C programs. 243This lets you do 244<pre> 245 RE(pattern, 246 RE_Options(PCRE_CASELESS|PCRE_MULTILINE)).PartialMatch(str); 247</pre> 248However, new code is better off doing 249<pre> 250 RE(pattern, 251 RE_Options().set_caseless(true).set_multiline(true)) 252 .PartialMatch(str); 253</pre> 254If you are going to pass one of the most used modifiers, there are some 255convenience functions that return a RE_Options class with the 256appropriate modifier already set: <b>CASELESS()</b>, <b>UTF8()</b>, 257<b>MULTILINE()</b>, <b>DOTALL</b>(), and <b>EXTENDED()</b>. 258</P> 259<P> 260If you need to set several options at once, and you don't want to go through 261the pains of declaring a RE_Options object and setting several options, there 262is a parallel method that give you such ability on the fly. You can concatenate 263several <b>set_xxxxx()</b> member functions, since each of them returns a 264reference to its class object. For example, to pass PCRE_CASELESS, 265PCRE_EXTENDED, and PCRE_MULTILINE to a RE with one statement, you may write: 266<pre> 267 RE(" ^ xyz \\s+ .* blah$", 268 RE_Options() 269 .set_caseless(true) 270 .set_extended(true) 271 .set_multiline(true)).PartialMatch(sometext); 272 273</PRE> 274</P> 275<br><a name="SEC8" href="#TOC1">SCANNING TEXT INCREMENTALLY</a><br> 276<P> 277The "Consume" operation may be useful if you want to repeatedly 278match regular expressions at the front of a string and skip over 279them as they match. This requires use of the "StringPiece" type, 280which represents a sub-range of a real string. Like RE, StringPiece 281is defined in the pcrecpp namespace. 282<pre> 283 Example: read lines of the form "var = value" from a string. 284 string contents = ...; // Fill string somehow 285 pcrecpp::StringPiece input(contents); // Wrap in a StringPiece 286 287 string var; 288 int value; 289 pcrecpp::RE re("(\\w+) = (\\d+)\n"); 290 while (re.Consume(&input, &var, &value)) { 291 ...; 292 } 293</pre> 294Each successful call to "Consume" will set "var/value", and also 295advance "input" so it points past the matched text. 296</P> 297<P> 298The "FindAndConsume" operation is similar to "Consume" but does not 299anchor your match at the beginning of the string. For example, you 300could extract all words from a string by repeatedly calling 301<pre> 302 pcrecpp::RE("(\\w+)").FindAndConsume(&input, &word) 303</PRE> 304</P> 305<br><a name="SEC9" href="#TOC1">PARSING HEX/OCTAL/C-RADIX NUMBERS</a><br> 306<P> 307By default, if you pass a pointer to a numeric value, the 308corresponding text is interpreted as a base-10 number. You can 309instead wrap the pointer with a call to one of the operators Hex(), 310Octal(), or CRadix() to interpret the text in another base. The 311CRadix operator interprets C-style "0" (base-8) and "0x" (base-16) 312prefixes, but defaults to base-10. 313<pre> 314 Example: 315 int a, b, c, d; 316 pcrecpp::RE re("(.*) (.*) (.*) (.*)"); 317 re.FullMatch("100 40 0100 0x40", 318 pcrecpp::Octal(&a), pcrecpp::Hex(&b), 319 pcrecpp::CRadix(&c), pcrecpp::CRadix(&d)); 320</pre> 321will leave 64 in a, b, c, and d. 322</P> 323<br><a name="SEC10" href="#TOC1">REPLACING PARTS OF STRINGS</a><br> 324<P> 325You can replace the first match of "pattern" in "str" with "rewrite". 326Within "rewrite", backslash-escaped digits (\1 to \9) can be 327used to insert text matching corresponding parenthesized group 328from the pattern. \0 in "rewrite" refers to the entire matching 329text. For example: 330<pre> 331 string s = "yabba dabba doo"; 332 pcrecpp::RE("b+").Replace("d", &s); 333</pre> 334will leave "s" containing "yada dabba doo". The result is true if the pattern 335matches and a replacement occurs, false otherwise. 336</P> 337<P> 338<b>GlobalReplace</b> is like <b>Replace</b> except that it replaces all 339occurrences of the pattern in the string with the rewrite. Replacements are 340not subject to re-matching. For example: 341<pre> 342 string s = "yabba dabba doo"; 343 pcrecpp::RE("b+").GlobalReplace("d", &s); 344</pre> 345will leave "s" containing "yada dada doo". It returns the number of 346replacements made. 347</P> 348<P> 349<b>Extract</b> is like <b>Replace</b>, except that if the pattern matches, 350"rewrite" is copied into "out" (an additional argument) with substitutions. 351The non-matching portions of "text" are ignored. Returns true iff a match 352occurred and the extraction happened successfully; if no match occurs, the 353string is left unaffected. 354</P> 355<br><a name="SEC11" href="#TOC1">AUTHOR</a><br> 356<P> 357The C++ wrapper was contributed by Google Inc. 358<br> 359Copyright © 2007 Google Inc. 360<br> 361</P> 362<br><a name="SEC12" href="#TOC1">REVISION</a><br> 363<P> 364Last updated: 08 January 2012 365<br> 366<p> 367Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>. 368</p> 369