Name Date Size #Lines LOC

..05-Dec-2019-

doc/H05-Dec-2019-

testdata/H05-Dec-2019-

AUTHORSH A D05-Dec-2019851 4629

COPYINGH A D05-Dec-201995 63

ChangeLogH A D05-Dec-2019234.2 KiB4,9823,697

HACKINGH A D05-Dec-201920.4 KiB474368

LICENCEH A D05-Dec-20193 KiB9364

NEWSH A D05-Dec-201923.8 KiB612419

NON-UNIX-USEH A D05-Dec-2019229 85

READMEH A D05-Dec-201941.8 KiB936726

config.hH A D05-Dec-201915 KiB445135

dftables.cH A D05-Dec-20196.8 KiB213134

pcre.hH A D05-Dec-201929.7 KiB654459

pcre_chartables.cH A D05-Dec-20197.7 KiB199141

pcre_compile.cH A D05-Dec-2019270.1 KiB8,3875,140

pcre_config.cH A D05-Dec-20194.8 KiB187108

pcre_exec.cH A D05-Dec-2019206.9 KiB7,0505,188

pcre_fullinfo.cH A D05-Dec-20197.2 KiB232124

pcre_get.cH A D05-Dec-201922.1 KiB663364

pcre_globals.cH A D05-Dec-20193.6 KiB8525

pcre_internal.hH A D05-Dec-2019106.7 KiB2,7471,768

pcre_maketables.cH A D05-Dec-20195.6 KiB15257

pcre_newline.cH A D05-Dec-20196 KiB21199

pcre_ord2utf8.cH A D05-Dec-20193.2 KiB9527

pcre_printint.srcH A D05-Dec-201915.9 KiB573488

pcre_refcount.cH A D05-Dec-20193.7 KiB9324

pcre_study.cH A D05-Dec-201944 KiB1,5631,019

pcre_tables.cH A D05-Dec-201924.7 KiB656505

pcre_ucd.cH A D05-Dec-2019185.7 KiB3,2992,842

pcre_valid_utf8.cH A D05-Dec-201910.4 KiB313159

pcre_version.cH A D05-Dec-20194.1 KiB9921

pcre_xclass.cH A D05-Dec-20196 KiB199106

pcredemo.cH A D05-Dec-201915.2 KiB407200

pcreposix.cH A D05-Dec-201915.4 KiB420243

pcreposix.hH A D05-Dec-20195.3 KiB14769

ucp.hH A D05-Dec-20194.6 KiB198163

README

1README file for PCRE (Perl-compatible regular expression library)
2-----------------------------------------------------------------
3
4The latest release of PCRE is always available in three alternative formats
5from:
6
7  ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.tar.gz
8  ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.tar.bz2
9  ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.zip
10
11There is a mailing list for discussion about the development of PCRE at
12
13  pcre-dev@exim.org
14
15Please read the NEWS file if you are upgrading from a previous release.
16The contents of this README file are:
17
18  The PCRE APIs
19  Documentation for PCRE
20  Contributions by users of PCRE
21  Building PCRE on non-Unix-like systems
22  Building PCRE without using autotools
23  Building PCRE using autotools
24  Retrieving configuration information
25  Shared libraries
26  Cross-compiling using autotools
27  Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)
28  Using PCRE from MySQL
29  Making new tarballs
30  Testing PCRE
31  Character tables
32  File manifest
33
34
35The PCRE APIs
36-------------
37
38PCRE is written in C, and it has its own API. There are three sets of functions,
39one for the 8-bit library, which processes strings of bytes, one for the
4016-bit library, which processes strings of 16-bit values, and one for the 32-bit
41library, which processes strings of 32-bit values. The distribution also
42includes a set of C++ wrapper functions (see the pcrecpp man page for details),
43courtesy of Google Inc., which can be used to call the 8-bit PCRE library from
44C++.
45
46In addition, there is a set of C wrapper functions (again, just for the 8-bit
47library) that are based on the POSIX regular expression API (see the pcreposix
48man page). These end up in the library called libpcreposix. Note that this just
49provides a POSIX calling interface to PCRE; the regular expressions themselves
50still follow Perl syntax and semantics. The POSIX API is restricted, and does
51not give full access to all of PCRE's facilities.
52
53The header file for the POSIX-style functions is called pcreposix.h. The
54official POSIX name is regex.h, but I did not want to risk possible problems
55with existing files of that name by distributing it that way. To use PCRE with
56an existing program that uses the POSIX API, pcreposix.h will have to be
57renamed or pointed at by a link.
58
59If you are using the POSIX interface to PCRE and there is already a POSIX regex
60library installed on your system, as well as worrying about the regex.h header
61file (as mentioned above), you must also take care when linking programs to
62ensure that they link with PCRE's libpcreposix library. Otherwise they may pick
63up the POSIX functions of the same name from the other library.
64
65One way of avoiding this confusion is to compile PCRE with the addition of
66-Dregcomp=PCREregcomp (and similarly for the other POSIX functions) to the
67compiler flags (CFLAGS if you are using "configure" -- see below). This has the
68effect of renaming the functions so that the names no longer clash. Of course,
69you have to do the same thing for your applications, or write them using the
70new names.
71
72
73Documentation for PCRE
74----------------------
75
76If you install PCRE in the normal way on a Unix-like system, you will end up
77with a set of man pages whose names all start with "pcre". The one that is just
78called "pcre" lists all the others. In addition to these man pages, the PCRE
79documentation is supplied in two other forms:
80
81  1. There are files called doc/pcre.txt, doc/pcregrep.txt, and
82     doc/pcretest.txt in the source distribution. The first of these is a
83     concatenation of the text forms of all the section 3 man pages except
84     those that summarize individual functions. The other two are the text
85     forms of the section 1 man pages for the pcregrep and pcretest commands.
86     These text forms are provided for ease of scanning with text editors or
87     similar tools. They are installed in <prefix>/share/doc/pcre, where
88     <prefix> is the installation prefix (defaulting to /usr/local).
89
90  2. A set of files containing all the documentation in HTML form, hyperlinked
91     in various ways, and rooted in a file called index.html, is distributed in
92     doc/html and installed in <prefix>/share/doc/pcre/html.
93
94Users of PCRE have contributed files containing the documentation for various
95releases in CHM format. These can be found in the Contrib directory of the FTP
96site (see next section).
97
98
99Contributions by users of PCRE
100------------------------------
101
102You can find contributions from PCRE users in the directory
103
104  ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/Contrib
105
106There is a README file giving brief descriptions of what they are. Some are
107complete in themselves; others are pointers to URLs containing relevant files.
108Some of this material is likely to be well out-of-date. Several of the earlier
109contributions provided support for compiling PCRE on various flavours of
110Windows (I myself do not use Windows). Nowadays there is more Windows support
111in the standard distribution, so these contibutions have been archived.
112
113
114Building PCRE on non-Unix-like systems
115--------------------------------------
116
117For a non-Unix-like system, please read the comments in the file
118NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD, though if your system supports the use of "configure" and
119"make" you may be able to build PCRE using autotools in the same way as for
120many Unix-like systems.
121
122PCRE can also be configured using the GUI facility provided by CMake's
123cmake-gui command. This creates Makefiles, solution files, etc. The file
124NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD has information about CMake.
125
126PCRE has been compiled on many different operating systems. It should be
127straightforward to build PCRE on any system that has a Standard C compiler and
128library, because it uses only Standard C functions.
129
130
131Building PCRE without using autotools
132-------------------------------------
133
134The use of autotools (in particular, libtool) is problematic in some
135environments, even some that are Unix or Unix-like. See the NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD
136file for ways of building PCRE without using autotools.
137
138
139Building PCRE using autotools
140-----------------------------
141
142If you are using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC), please see the special note
143in the section entitled "Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)" below.
144
145The following instructions assume the use of the widely used "configure; make;
146make install" (autotools) process.
147
148To build PCRE on system that supports autotools, first run the "configure"
149command from the PCRE distribution directory, with your current directory set
150to the directory where you want the files to be created. This command is a
151standard GNU "autoconf" configuration script, for which generic instructions
152are supplied in the file INSTALL.
153
154Most commonly, people build PCRE within its own distribution directory, and in
155this case, on many systems, just running "./configure" is sufficient. However,
156the usual methods of changing standard defaults are available. For example:
157
158CFLAGS='-O2 -Wall' ./configure --prefix=/opt/local
159
160This command specifies that the C compiler should be run with the flags '-O2
161-Wall' instead of the default, and that "make install" should install PCRE
162under /opt/local instead of the default /usr/local.
163
164If you want to build in a different directory, just run "configure" with that
165directory as current. For example, suppose you have unpacked the PCRE source
166into /source/pcre/pcre-xxx, but you want to build it in /build/pcre/pcre-xxx:
167
168cd /build/pcre/pcre-xxx
169/source/pcre/pcre-xxx/configure
170
171PCRE is written in C and is normally compiled as a C library. However, it is
172possible to build it as a C++ library, though the provided building apparatus
173does not have any features to support this.
174
175There are some optional features that can be included or omitted from the PCRE
176library. They are also documented in the pcrebuild man page.
177
178. By default, both shared and static libraries are built. You can change this
179  by adding one of these options to the "configure" command:
180
181  --disable-shared
182  --disable-static
183
184  (See also "Shared libraries on Unix-like systems" below.)
185
186. By default, only the 8-bit library is built. If you add --enable-pcre16 to
187  the "configure" command, the 16-bit library is also built. If you add
188  --enable-pcre32 to the "configure" command, the 32-bit library is also built.
189  If you want only the 16-bit or 32-bit library, use --disable-pcre8 to disable
190  building the 8-bit library.
191
192. If you are building the 8-bit library and want to suppress the building of
193  the C++ wrapper library, you can add --disable-cpp to the "configure"
194  command. Otherwise, when "configure" is run without --disable-pcre8, it will
195  try to find a C++ compiler and C++ header files, and if it succeeds, it will
196  try to build the C++ wrapper.
197
198. If you want to include support for just-in-time compiling, which can give
199  large performance improvements on certain platforms, add --enable-jit to the
200  "configure" command. This support is available only for certain hardware
201  architectures. If you try to enable it on an unsupported architecture, there
202  will be a compile time error.
203
204. When JIT support is enabled, pcregrep automatically makes use of it, unless
205  you add --disable-pcregrep-jit to the "configure" command.
206
207. If you want to make use of the support for UTF-8 Unicode character strings in
208  the 8-bit library, or UTF-16 Unicode character strings in the 16-bit library,
209  or UTF-32 Unicode character strings in the 32-bit library, you must add
210  --enable-utf to the "configure" command. Without it, the code for handling
211  UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-8 is not included in the relevant library. Even
212  when --enable-utf is included, the use of a UTF encoding still has to be
213  enabled by an option at run time. When PCRE is compiled with this option, its
214  input can only either be ASCII or UTF-8/16/32, even when running on EBCDIC
215  platforms. It is not possible to use both --enable-utf and --enable-ebcdic at
216  the same time.
217
218. There are no separate options for enabling UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32
219  independently because that would allow ridiculous settings such as requesting
220  UTF-16 support while building only the 8-bit library. However, the option
221  --enable-utf8 is retained for backwards compatibility with earlier releases
222  that did not support 16-bit or 32-bit character strings. It is synonymous with
223  --enable-utf. It is not possible to configure one library with UTF support
224  and the other without in the same configuration.
225
226. If, in addition to support for UTF-8/16/32 character strings, you want to
227  include support for the \P, \p, and \X sequences that recognize Unicode
228  character properties, you must add --enable-unicode-properties to the
229  "configure" command. This adds about 30K to the size of the library (in the
230  form of a property table); only the basic two-letter properties such as Lu
231  are supported.
232
233. You can build PCRE to recognize either CR or LF or the sequence CRLF or any
234  of the preceding, or any of the Unicode newline sequences as indicating the
235  end of a line. Whatever you specify at build time is the default; the caller
236  of PCRE can change the selection at run time. The default newline indicator
237  is a single LF character (the Unix standard). You can specify the default
238  newline indicator by adding --enable-newline-is-cr or --enable-newline-is-lf
239  or --enable-newline-is-crlf or --enable-newline-is-anycrlf or
240  --enable-newline-is-any to the "configure" command, respectively.
241
242  If you specify --enable-newline-is-cr or --enable-newline-is-crlf, some of
243  the standard tests will fail, because the lines in the test files end with
244  LF. Even if the files are edited to change the line endings, there are likely
245  to be some failures. With --enable-newline-is-anycrlf or
246  --enable-newline-is-any, many tests should succeed, but there may be some
247  failures.
248
249. By default, the sequence \R in a pattern matches any Unicode line ending
250  sequence. This is independent of the option specifying what PCRE considers to
251  be the end of a line (see above). However, the caller of PCRE can restrict \R
252  to match only CR, LF, or CRLF. You can make this the default by adding
253  --enable-bsr-anycrlf to the "configure" command (bsr = "backslash R").
254
255. When called via the POSIX interface, PCRE uses malloc() to get additional
256  storage for processing capturing parentheses if there are more than 10 of
257  them in a pattern. You can increase this threshold by setting, for example,
258
259  --with-posix-malloc-threshold=20
260
261  on the "configure" command.
262
263. PCRE has a counter that can be set to limit the amount of resources it uses.
264  If the limit is exceeded during a match, the match fails. The default is ten
265  million. You can change the default by setting, for example,
266
267  --with-match-limit=500000
268
269  on the "configure" command. This is just the default; individual calls to
270  pcre_exec() can supply their own value. There is more discussion on the
271  pcreapi man page.
272
273. There is a separate counter that limits the depth of recursive function calls
274  during a matching process. This also has a default of ten million, which is
275  essentially "unlimited". You can change the default by setting, for example,
276
277  --with-match-limit-recursion=500000
278
279  Recursive function calls use up the runtime stack; running out of stack can
280  cause programs to crash in strange ways. There is a discussion about stack
281  sizes in the pcrestack man page.
282
283. The default maximum compiled pattern size is around 64K. You can increase
284  this by adding --with-link-size=3 to the "configure" command. In the 8-bit
285  library, PCRE then uses three bytes instead of two for offsets to different
286  parts of the compiled pattern. In the 16-bit library, --with-link-size=3 is
287  the same as --with-link-size=4, which (in both libraries) uses four-byte
288  offsets. Increasing the internal link size reduces performance. In the 32-bit
289  library, the only supported link size is 4.
290
291. You can build PCRE so that its internal match() function that is called from
292  pcre_exec() does not call itself recursively. Instead, it uses memory blocks
293  obtained from the heap via the special functions pcre_stack_malloc() and
294  pcre_stack_free() to save data that would otherwise be saved on the stack. To
295  build PCRE like this, use
296
297  --disable-stack-for-recursion
298
299  on the "configure" command. PCRE runs more slowly in this mode, but it may be
300  necessary in environments with limited stack sizes. This applies only to the
301  normal execution of the pcre_exec() function; if JIT support is being
302  successfully used, it is not relevant. Equally, it does not apply to
303  pcre_dfa_exec(), which does not use deeply nested recursion. There is a
304  discussion about stack sizes in the pcrestack man page.
305
306. For speed, PCRE uses four tables for manipulating and identifying characters
307  whose code point values are less than 256. By default, it uses a set of
308  tables for ASCII encoding that is part of the distribution. If you specify
309
310  --enable-rebuild-chartables
311
312  a program called dftables is compiled and run in the default C locale when
313  you obey "make". It builds a source file called pcre_chartables.c. If you do
314  not specify this option, pcre_chartables.c is created as a copy of
315  pcre_chartables.c.dist. See "Character tables" below for further information.
316
317. It is possible to compile PCRE for use on systems that use EBCDIC as their
318  character code (as opposed to ASCII/Unicode) by specifying
319
320  --enable-ebcdic
321
322  This automatically implies --enable-rebuild-chartables (see above). However,
323  when PCRE is built this way, it always operates in EBCDIC. It cannot support
324  both EBCDIC and UTF-8/16/32. There is a second option, --enable-ebcdic-nl25,
325  which specifies that the code value for the EBCDIC NL character is 0x25
326  instead of the default 0x15.
327
328. In environments where valgrind is installed, if you specify
329
330  --enable-valgrind
331
332  PCRE will use valgrind annotations to mark certain memory regions as
333  unaddressable. This allows it to detect invalid memory accesses, and is
334  mostly useful for debugging PCRE itself.
335
336. In environments where the gcc compiler is used and lcov version 1.6 or above
337  is installed, if you specify
338
339  --enable-coverage
340
341  the build process implements a code coverage report for the test suite. The
342  report is generated by running "make coverage". If ccache is installed on
343  your system, it must be disabled when building PCRE for coverage reporting.
344  You can do this by setting the environment variable CCACHE_DISABLE=1 before
345  running "make" to build PCRE.
346
347. The pcregrep program currently supports only 8-bit data files, and so
348  requires the 8-bit PCRE library. It is possible to compile pcregrep to use
349  libz and/or libbz2, in order to read .gz and .bz2 files (respectively), by
350  specifying one or both of
351
352  --enable-pcregrep-libz
353  --enable-pcregrep-libbz2
354
355  Of course, the relevant libraries must be installed on your system.
356
357. The default size of internal buffer used by pcregrep can be set by, for
358  example:
359
360  --with-pcregrep-bufsize=50K
361
362  The default value is 20K.
363
364. It is possible to compile pcretest so that it links with the libreadline
365  or libedit libraries, by specifying, respectively,
366
367  --enable-pcretest-libreadline or --enable-pcretest-libedit
368
369  If this is done, when pcretest's input is from a terminal, it reads it using
370  the readline() function. This provides line-editing and history facilities.
371  Note that libreadline is GPL-licenced, so if you distribute a binary of
372  pcretest linked in this way, there may be licensing issues. These can be
373  avoided by linking with libedit (which has a BSD licence) instead.
374
375  Enabling libreadline causes the -lreadline option to be added to the pcretest
376  build. In many operating environments with a sytem-installed readline
377  library this is sufficient. However, in some environments (e.g. if an
378  unmodified distribution version of readline is in use), it may be necessary
379  to specify something like LIBS="-lncurses" as well. This is because, to quote
380  the readline INSTALL, "Readline uses the termcap functions, but does not link
381  with the termcap or curses library itself, allowing applications which link
382  with readline the to choose an appropriate library." If you get error
383  messages about missing functions tgetstr, tgetent, tputs, tgetflag, or tgoto,
384  this is the problem, and linking with the ncurses library should fix it.
385
386The "configure" script builds the following files for the basic C library:
387
388. Makefile             the makefile that builds the library
389. config.h             build-time configuration options for the library
390. pcre.h               the public PCRE header file
391. pcre-config          script that shows the building settings such as CFLAGS
392                         that were set for "configure"
393. libpcre.pc         ) data for the pkg-config command
394. libpcre16.pc       )
395. libpcre32.pc       )
396. libpcreposix.pc    )
397. libtool              script that builds shared and/or static libraries
398
399Versions of config.h and pcre.h are distributed in the PCRE tarballs under the
400names config.h.generic and pcre.h.generic. These are provided for those who
401have to built PCRE without using "configure" or CMake. If you use "configure"
402or CMake, the .generic versions are not used.
403
404When building the 8-bit library, if a C++ compiler is found, the following
405files are also built:
406
407. libpcrecpp.pc        data for the pkg-config command
408. pcrecpparg.h         header file for calling PCRE via the C++ wrapper
409. pcre_stringpiece.h   header for the C++ "stringpiece" functions
410
411The "configure" script also creates config.status, which is an executable
412script that can be run to recreate the configuration, and config.log, which
413contains compiler output from tests that "configure" runs.
414
415Once "configure" has run, you can run "make". This builds the the libraries
416libpcre, libpcre16 and/or libpcre32, and a test program called pcretest. If you
417enabled JIT support with --enable-jit, a test program called pcre_jit_test is
418built as well.
419
420If the 8-bit library is built, libpcreposix and the pcregrep command are also
421built, and if a C++ compiler was found on your system, and you did not disable
422it with --disable-cpp, "make" builds the C++ wrapper library, which is called
423libpcrecpp, as well as some test programs called pcrecpp_unittest,
424pcre_scanner_unittest, and pcre_stringpiece_unittest.
425
426The command "make check" runs all the appropriate tests. Details of the PCRE
427tests are given below in a separate section of this document.
428
429You can use "make install" to install PCRE into live directories on your
430system. The following are installed (file names are all relative to the
431<prefix> that is set when "configure" is run):
432
433  Commands (bin):
434    pcretest
435    pcregrep (if 8-bit support is enabled)
436    pcre-config
437
438  Libraries (lib):
439    libpcre16     (if 16-bit support is enabled)
440    libpcre32     (if 32-bit support is enabled)
441    libpcre       (if 8-bit support is enabled)
442    libpcreposix  (if 8-bit support is enabled)
443    libpcrecpp    (if 8-bit and C++ support is enabled)
444
445  Configuration information (lib/pkgconfig):
446    libpcre16.pc
447    libpcre32.pc
448    libpcre.pc
449    libpcreposix.pc
450    libpcrecpp.pc (if C++ support is enabled)
451
452  Header files (include):
453    pcre.h
454    pcreposix.h
455    pcre_scanner.h      )
456    pcre_stringpiece.h  ) if C++ support is enabled
457    pcrecpp.h           )
458    pcrecpparg.h        )
459
460  Man pages (share/man/man{1,3}):
461    pcregrep.1
462    pcretest.1
463    pcre-config.1
464    pcre.3
465    pcre*.3 (lots more pages, all starting "pcre")
466
467  HTML documentation (share/doc/pcre/html):
468    index.html
469    *.html (lots more pages, hyperlinked from index.html)
470
471  Text file documentation (share/doc/pcre):
472    AUTHORS
473    COPYING
474    ChangeLog
475    LICENCE
476    NEWS
477    README
478    pcre.txt         (a concatenation of the man(3) pages)
479    pcretest.txt     the pcretest man page
480    pcregrep.txt     the pcregrep man page
481    pcre-config.txt  the pcre-config man page
482
483If you want to remove PCRE from your system, you can run "make uninstall".
484This removes all the files that "make install" installed. However, it does not
485remove any directories, because these are often shared with other programs.
486
487
488Retrieving configuration information
489------------------------------------
490
491Running "make install" installs the command pcre-config, which can be used to
492recall information about the PCRE configuration and installation. For example:
493
494  pcre-config --version
495
496prints the version number, and
497
498  pcre-config --libs
499
500outputs information about where the library is installed. This command can be
501included in makefiles for programs that use PCRE, saving the programmer from
502having to remember too many details.
503
504The pkg-config command is another system for saving and retrieving information
505about installed libraries. Instead of separate commands for each library, a
506single command is used. For example:
507
508  pkg-config --cflags pcre
509
510The data is held in *.pc files that are installed in a directory called
511<prefix>/lib/pkgconfig.
512
513
514Shared libraries
515----------------
516
517The default distribution builds PCRE as shared libraries and static libraries,
518as long as the operating system supports shared libraries. Shared library
519support relies on the "libtool" script which is built as part of the
520"configure" process.
521
522The libtool script is used to compile and link both shared and static
523libraries. They are placed in a subdirectory called .libs when they are newly
524built. The programs pcretest and pcregrep are built to use these uninstalled
525libraries (by means of wrapper scripts in the case of shared libraries). When
526you use "make install" to install shared libraries, pcregrep and pcretest are
527automatically re-built to use the newly installed shared libraries before being
528installed themselves. However, the versions left in the build directory still
529use the uninstalled libraries.
530
531To build PCRE using static libraries only you must use --disable-shared when
532configuring it. For example:
533
534./configure --prefix=/usr/gnu --disable-shared
535
536Then run "make" in the usual way. Similarly, you can use --disable-static to
537build only shared libraries.
538
539
540Cross-compiling using autotools
541-------------------------------
542
543You can specify CC and CFLAGS in the normal way to the "configure" command, in
544order to cross-compile PCRE for some other host. However, you should NOT
545specify --enable-rebuild-chartables, because if you do, the dftables.c source
546file is compiled and run on the local host, in order to generate the inbuilt
547character tables (the pcre_chartables.c file). This will probably not work,
548because dftables.c needs to be compiled with the local compiler, not the cross
549compiler.
550
551When --enable-rebuild-chartables is not specified, pcre_chartables.c is created
552by making a copy of pcre_chartables.c.dist, which is a default set of tables
553that assumes ASCII code. Cross-compiling with the default tables should not be
554a problem.
555
556If you need to modify the character tables when cross-compiling, you should
557move pcre_chartables.c.dist out of the way, then compile dftables.c by hand and
558run it on the local host to make a new version of pcre_chartables.c.dist.
559Then when you cross-compile PCRE this new version of the tables will be used.
560
561
562Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)
563----------------------------------
564
565Unless C++ support is disabled by specifying the "--disable-cpp" option of the
566"configure" script, you must include the "-AA" option in the CXXFLAGS
567environment variable in order for the C++ components to compile correctly.
568
569Also, note that the aCC compiler on PA-RISC platforms may have a defect whereby
570needed libraries fail to get included when specifying the "-AA" compiler
571option. If you experience unresolved symbols when linking the C++ programs,
572use the workaround of specifying the following environment variable prior to
573running the "configure" script:
574
575  CXXLDFLAGS="-lstd_v2 -lCsup_v2"
576
577
578Using Sun's compilers for Solaris
579---------------------------------
580
581A user reports that the following configurations work on Solaris 9 sparcv9 and
582Solaris 9 x86 (32-bit):
583
584  Solaris 9 sparcv9: ./configure --disable-cpp CC=/bin/cc CFLAGS="-m64 -g"
585  Solaris 9 x86:     ./configure --disable-cpp CC=/bin/cc CFLAGS="-g"
586
587
588Using PCRE from MySQL
589---------------------
590
591On systems where both PCRE and MySQL are installed, it is possible to make use
592of PCRE from within MySQL, as an alternative to the built-in pattern matching.
593There is a web page that tells you how to do this:
594
595  http://www.mysqludf.org/lib_mysqludf_preg/index.php
596
597
598Making new tarballs
599-------------------
600
601The command "make dist" creates three PCRE tarballs, in tar.gz, tar.bz2, and
602zip formats. The command "make distcheck" does the same, but then does a trial
603build of the new distribution to ensure that it works.
604
605If you have modified any of the man page sources in the doc directory, you
606should first run the PrepareRelease script before making a distribution. This
607script creates the .txt and HTML forms of the documentation from the man pages.
608
609
610Testing PCRE
611------------
612
613To test the basic PCRE library on a Unix-like system, run the RunTest script.
614There is another script called RunGrepTest that tests the options of the
615pcregrep command. If the C++ wrapper library is built, three test programs
616called pcrecpp_unittest, pcre_scanner_unittest, and pcre_stringpiece_unittest
617are also built. When JIT support is enabled, another test program called
618pcre_jit_test is built.
619
620Both the scripts and all the program tests are run if you obey "make check" or
621"make test". For other environments, see the instructions in
622NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD.
623
624The RunTest script runs the pcretest test program (which is documented in its
625own man page) on each of the relevant testinput files in the testdata
626directory, and compares the output with the contents of the corresponding
627testoutput files. Some tests are relevant only when certain build-time options
628were selected. For example, the tests for UTF-8/16/32 support are run only if
629--enable-utf was used. RunTest outputs a comment when it skips a test.
630
631Many of the tests that are not skipped are run up to three times. The second
632run forces pcre_study() to be called for all patterns except for a few in some
633tests that are marked "never study" (see the pcretest program for how this is
634done). If JIT support is available, the non-DFA tests are run a third time,
635this time with a forced pcre_study() with the PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE option.
636
637The entire set of tests is run once for each of the 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit
638libraries that are enabled. If you want to run just one set of tests, call
639RunTest with either the -8, -16 or -32 option.
640
641RunTest uses a file called testtry to hold the main output from pcretest.
642Other files whose names begin with "test" are used as working files in some
643tests. To run pcretest on just one or more specific test files, give their
644numbers as arguments to RunTest, for example:
645
646  RunTest 2 7 11
647
648You can also call RunTest with the single argument "list" to cause it to output
649a list of tests.
650
651The first test file can be fed directly into the perltest.pl script to check
652that Perl gives the same results. The only difference you should see is in the
653first few lines, where the Perl version is given instead of the PCRE version.
654
655The second set of tests check pcre_fullinfo(), pcre_study(),
656pcre_copy_substring(), pcre_get_substring(), pcre_get_substring_list(), error
657detection, and run-time flags that are specific to PCRE, as well as the POSIX
658wrapper API. It also uses the debugging flags to check some of the internals of
659pcre_compile().
660
661If you build PCRE with a locale setting that is not the standard C locale, the
662character tables may be different (see next paragraph). In some cases, this may
663cause failures in the second set of tests. For example, in a locale where the
664isprint() function yields TRUE for characters in the range 128-255, the use of
665[:isascii:] inside a character class defines a different set of characters, and
666this shows up in this test as a difference in the compiled code, which is being
667listed for checking. Where the comparison test output contains [\x00-\x7f] the
668test will contain [\x00-\xff], and similarly in some other cases. This is not a
669bug in PCRE.
670
671The third set of tests checks pcre_maketables(), the facility for building a
672set of character tables for a specific locale and using them instead of the
673default tables. The tests make use of the "fr_FR" (French) locale. Before
674running the test, the script checks for the presence of this locale by running
675the "locale" command. If that command fails, or if it doesn't include "fr_FR"
676in the list of available locales, the third test cannot be run, and a comment
677is output to say why. If running this test produces instances of the error
678
679  ** Failed to set locale "fr_FR"
680
681in the comparison output, it means that locale is not available on your system,
682despite being listed by "locale". This does not mean that PCRE is broken.
683
684[If you are trying to run this test on Windows, you may be able to get it to
685work by changing "fr_FR" to "french" everywhere it occurs. Alternatively, use
686RunTest.bat. The version of RunTest.bat included with PCRE 7.4 and above uses
687Windows versions of test 2. More info on using RunTest.bat is included in the
688document entitled NON-UNIX-USE.]
689
690The fourth and fifth tests check the UTF-8/16/32 support and error handling and
691internal UTF features of PCRE that are not relevant to Perl, respectively. The
692sixth and seventh tests do the same for Unicode character properties support.
693
694The eighth, ninth, and tenth tests check the pcre_dfa_exec() alternative
695matching function, in non-UTF-8/16/32 mode, UTF-8/16/32 mode, and UTF-8/16/32
696mode with Unicode property support, respectively.
697
698The eleventh test checks some internal offsets and code size features; it is
699run only when the default "link size" of 2 is set (in other cases the sizes
700change) and when Unicode property support is enabled.
701
702The twelfth test is run only when JIT support is available, and the thirteenth
703test is run only when JIT support is not available. They test some JIT-specific
704features such as information output from pcretest about JIT compilation.
705
706The fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth tests are run only in 8-bit mode, and
707the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth tests are run only in 16/32-bit mode.
708These are tests that generate different output in the two modes. They are for
709general cases, UTF-8/16/32 support, and Unicode property support, respectively.
710
711The twentieth test is run only in 16/32-bit mode. It tests some specific
71216/32-bit features of the DFA matching engine.
713
714The twenty-first and twenty-second tests are run only in 16/32-bit mode, when the
715link size is set to 2 for the 16-bit library. They test reloading pre-compiled patterns.
716
717The twenty-third and twenty-fourth tests are run only in 16-bit mode. They are for
718general cases, and UTF-16 support, respectively.
719
720The twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth tests are run only in 32-bit mode. They are for
721general cases, and UTF-32 support, respectively.
722
723Character tables
724----------------
725
726For speed, PCRE uses four tables for manipulating and identifying characters
727whose code point values are less than 256. The final argument of the
728pcre_compile() function is a pointer to a block of memory containing the
729concatenated tables. A call to pcre_maketables() can be used to generate a set
730of tables in the current locale. If the final argument for pcre_compile() is
731passed as NULL, a set of default tables that is built into the binary is used.
732
733The source file called pcre_chartables.c contains the default set of tables. By
734default, this is created as a copy of pcre_chartables.c.dist, which contains
735tables for ASCII coding. However, if --enable-rebuild-chartables is specified
736for ./configure, a different version of pcre_chartables.c is built by the
737program dftables (compiled from dftables.c), which uses the ANSI C character
738handling functions such as isalnum(), isalpha(), isupper(), islower(), etc. to
739build the table sources. This means that the default C locale which is set for
740your system will control the contents of these default tables. You can change
741the default tables by editing pcre_chartables.c and then re-building PCRE. If
742you do this, you should take care to ensure that the file does not get
743automatically re-generated. The best way to do this is to move
744pcre_chartables.c.dist out of the way and replace it with your customized
745tables.
746
747When the dftables program is run as a result of --enable-rebuild-chartables,
748it uses the default C locale that is set on your system. It does not pay
749attention to the LC_xxx environment variables. In other words, it uses the
750system's default locale rather than whatever the compiling user happens to have
751set. If you really do want to build a source set of character tables in a
752locale that is specified by the LC_xxx variables, you can run the dftables
753program by hand with the -L option. For example:
754
755  ./dftables -L pcre_chartables.c.special
756
757The first two 256-byte tables provide lower casing and case flipping functions,
758respectively. The next table consists of three 32-byte bit maps which identify
759digits, "word" characters, and white space, respectively. These are used when
760building 32-byte bit maps that represent character classes for code points less
761than 256.
762
763The final 256-byte table has bits indicating various character types, as
764follows:
765
766    1   white space character
767    2   letter
768    4   decimal digit
769    8   hexadecimal digit
770   16   alphanumeric or '_'
771  128   regular expression metacharacter or binary zero
772
773You should not alter the set of characters that contain the 128 bit, as that
774will cause PCRE to malfunction.
775
776
777File manifest
778-------------
779
780The distribution should contain the files listed below. Where a file name is
781given as pcre[16|32]_xxx it means that there are three files, one with the name
782pcre_xxx, one with the name pcre16_xx, and a third with the name pcre32_xxx.
783
784(A) Source files of the PCRE library functions and their headers:
785
786  dftables.c              auxiliary program for building pcre_chartables.c
787                            when --enable-rebuild-chartables is specified
788
789  pcre_chartables.c.dist  a default set of character tables that assume ASCII
790                            coding; used, unless --enable-rebuild-chartables is
791                            specified, by copying to pcre[16]_chartables.c
792
793  pcreposix.c                )
794  pcre[16|32]_byte_order.c   )
795  pcre[16|32]_compile.c      )
796  pcre[16|32]_config.c       )
797  pcre[16|32]_dfa_exec.c     )
798  pcre[16|32]_exec.c         )
799  pcre[16|32]_fullinfo.c     )
800  pcre[16|32]_get.c          ) sources for the functions in the library,
801  pcre[16|32]_globals.c      )   and some internal functions that they use
802  pcre[16|32]_jit_compile.c  )
803  pcre[16|32]_maketables.c   )
804  pcre[16|32]_newline.c      )
805  pcre[16|32]_refcount.c     )
806  pcre[16|32]_string_utils.c )
807  pcre[16|32]_study.c        )
808  pcre[16|32]_tables.c       )
809  pcre[16|32]_ucd.c          )
810  pcre[16|32]_version.c      )
811  pcre[16|32]_xclass.c       )
812  pcre_ord2utf8.c            )
813  pcre_valid_utf8.c          )
814  pcre16_ord2utf16.c         )
815  pcre16_utf16_utils.c       )
816  pcre16_valid_utf16.c       )
817  pcre32_utf32_utils.c       )
818  pcre32_valid_utf32.c       )
819
820  pcre[16|32]_printint.c     ) debugging function that is used by pcretest,
821                             )   and can also be #included in pcre_compile()
822
823  pcre.h.in               template for pcre.h when built by "configure"
824  pcreposix.h             header for the external POSIX wrapper API
825  pcre_internal.h         header for internal use
826  sljit/*                 16 files that make up the JIT compiler
827  ucp.h                   header for Unicode property handling
828
829  config.h.in             template for config.h, which is built by "configure"
830
831  pcrecpp.h               public header file for the C++ wrapper
832  pcrecpparg.h.in         template for another C++ header file
833  pcre_scanner.h          public header file for C++ scanner functions
834  pcrecpp.cc              )
835  pcre_scanner.cc         ) source for the C++ wrapper library
836
837  pcre_stringpiece.h.in   template for pcre_stringpiece.h, the header for the
838                            C++ stringpiece functions
839  pcre_stringpiece.cc     source for the C++ stringpiece functions
840
841(B) Source files for programs that use PCRE:
842
843  pcredemo.c              simple demonstration of coding calls to PCRE
844  pcregrep.c              source of a grep utility that uses PCRE
845  pcretest.c              comprehensive test program
846
847(C) Auxiliary files:
848
849  132html                 script to turn "man" pages into HTML
850  AUTHORS                 information about the author of PCRE
851  ChangeLog               log of changes to the code
852  CleanTxt                script to clean nroff output for txt man pages
853  Detrail                 script to remove trailing spaces
854  HACKING                 some notes about the internals of PCRE
855  INSTALL                 generic installation instructions
856  LICENCE                 conditions for the use of PCRE
857  COPYING                 the same, using GNU's standard name
858  Makefile.in             ) template for Unix Makefile, which is built by
859                          )   "configure"
860  Makefile.am             ) the automake input that was used to create
861                          )   Makefile.in
862  NEWS                    important changes in this release
863  NON-UNIX-USE            the previous name for NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD
864  NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD     notes on building PCRE without using autotools
865  PrepareRelease          script to make preparations for "make dist"
866  README                  this file
867  RunTest                 a Unix shell script for running tests
868  RunGrepTest             a Unix shell script for pcregrep tests
869  aclocal.m4              m4 macros (generated by "aclocal")
870  config.guess            ) files used by libtool,
871  config.sub              )   used only when building a shared library
872  configure               a configuring shell script (built by autoconf)
873  configure.ac            ) the autoconf input that was used to build
874                          )   "configure" and config.h
875  depcomp                 ) script to find program dependencies, generated by
876                          )   automake
877  doc/*.3                 man page sources for PCRE
878  doc/*.1                 man page sources for pcregrep and pcretest
879  doc/index.html.src      the base HTML page
880  doc/html/*              HTML documentation
881  doc/pcre.txt            plain text version of the man pages
882  doc/pcretest.txt        plain text documentation of test program
883  doc/perltest.txt        plain text documentation of Perl test program
884  install-sh              a shell script for installing files
885  libpcre16.pc.in         template for libpcre16.pc for pkg-config
886  libpcre32.pc.in         template for libpcre32.pc for pkg-config
887  libpcre.pc.in           template for libpcre.pc for pkg-config
888  libpcreposix.pc.in      template for libpcreposix.pc for pkg-config
889  libpcrecpp.pc.in        template for libpcrecpp.pc for pkg-config
890  ltmain.sh               file used to build a libtool script
891  missing                 ) common stub for a few missing GNU programs while
892                          )   installing, generated by automake
893  mkinstalldirs           script for making install directories
894  perltest.pl             Perl test program
895  pcre-config.in          source of script which retains PCRE information
896  pcre_jit_test.c         test program for the JIT compiler
897  pcrecpp_unittest.cc          )
898  pcre_scanner_unittest.cc     ) test programs for the C++ wrapper
899  pcre_stringpiece_unittest.cc )
900  testdata/testinput*     test data for main library tests
901  testdata/testoutput*    expected test results
902  testdata/grep*          input and output for pcregrep tests
903  testdata/*              other supporting test files
904
905(D) Auxiliary files for cmake support
906
907  cmake/COPYING-CMAKE-SCRIPTS
908  cmake/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake
909  cmake/FindEditline.cmake
910  cmake/FindReadline.cmake
911  CMakeLists.txt
912  config-cmake.h.in
913
914(E) Auxiliary files for VPASCAL
915
916  makevp.bat
917  makevp_c.txt
918  makevp_l.txt
919  pcregexp.pas
920
921(F) Auxiliary files for building PCRE "by hand"
922
923  pcre.h.generic          ) a version of the public PCRE header file
924                          )   for use in non-"configure" environments
925  config.h.generic        ) a version of config.h for use in non-"configure"
926                          )   environments
927
928(F) Miscellaneous
929
930  RunTest.bat            a script for running tests under Windows
931
932Philip Hazel
933Email local part: ph10
934Email domain: cam.ac.uk
935Last updated: 27 October 2012
936