1<html>
2<head>
3<title>pcre_exec specification</title>
4</head>
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6<h1>pcre_exec 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 &#60;pcre.h&#62;</b>
20</P>
21<P>
22<b>int pcre_exec(const pcre *<i>code</i>, const pcre_extra *<i>extra</i>,</b>
23<b>     const char *<i>subject</i>, int <i>length</i>, int <i>startoffset</i>,</b>
24<b>     int <i>options</i>, int *<i>ovector</i>, int <i>ovecsize</i>);</b>
25<br>
26<br>
27<b>int pcre16_exec(const pcre16 *<i>code</i>, const pcre16_extra *<i>extra</i>,</b>
28<b>     PCRE_SPTR16 <i>subject</i>, int <i>length</i>, int <i>startoffset</i>,</b>
29<b>     int <i>options</i>, int *<i>ovector</i>, int <i>ovecsize</i>);</b>
30<br>
31<br>
32<b>int pcre32_exec(const pcre32 *<i>code</i>, const pcre32_extra *<i>extra</i>,</b>
33<b>     PCRE_SPTR32 <i>subject</i>, int <i>length</i>, int <i>startoffset</i>,</b>
34<b>     int <i>options</i>, int *<i>ovector</i>, int <i>ovecsize</i>);</b>
35</P>
36<br><b>
37DESCRIPTION
38</b><br>
39<P>
40This function matches a compiled regular expression against a given subject
41string, using a matching algorithm that is similar to Perl's. It returns
42offsets to captured substrings. Its arguments are:
43<pre>
44  <i>code</i>         Points to the compiled pattern
45  <i>extra</i>        Points to an associated <b>pcre[16|32]_extra</b> structure,
46                 or is NULL
47  <i>subject</i>      Points to the subject string
48  <i>length</i>       Length of the subject string
49  <i>startoffset</i>  Offset in the subject at which to start matching
50  <i>options</i>      Option bits
51  <i>ovector</i>      Points to a vector of ints for result offsets
52  <i>ovecsize</i>     Number of elements in the vector (a multiple of 3)
53</pre>
54The units for <i>length</i> and <i>startoffset</i> are bytes for
55<b>pcre_exec()</b>, 16-bit data items for <b>pcre16_exec()</b>, and 32-bit items
56for <b>pcre32_exec()</b>. The options are:
57<pre>
58  PCRE_ANCHORED          Match only at the first position
59  PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF       \R matches only CR, LF, or CRLF
60  PCRE_BSR_UNICODE       \R matches all Unicode line endings
61  PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY       Recognize any Unicode newline sequence
62  PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF   Recognize CR, LF, & CRLF as newline sequences
63  PCRE_NEWLINE_CR        Recognize CR as the only newline sequence
64  PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF      Recognize CRLF as the only newline sequence
65  PCRE_NEWLINE_LF        Recognize LF as the only newline sequence
66  PCRE_NOTBOL            Subject string is not the beginning of a line
67  PCRE_NOTEOL            Subject string is not the end of a line
68  PCRE_NOTEMPTY          An empty string is not a valid match
69  PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART  An empty string at the start of the subject
70                           is not a valid match
71  PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE Do not do "start-match" optimizations
72  PCRE_NO_UTF16_CHECK    Do not check the subject for UTF-16
73                           validity (only relevant if PCRE_UTF16
74                           was set at compile time)
75  PCRE_NO_UTF32_CHECK    Do not check the subject for UTF-32
76                           validity (only relevant if PCRE_UTF32
77                           was set at compile time)
78  PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK     Do not check the subject for UTF-8
79                           validity (only relevant if PCRE_UTF8
80                           was set at compile time)
81  PCRE_PARTIAL           ) Return PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL for a partial
82  PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT      )   match if no full matches are found
83  PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD      Return PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL for a partial match
84                           if that is found before a full match
85</pre>
86For details of partial matching, see the
87<a href="pcrepartial.html"><b>pcrepartial</b></a>
88page. A <b>pcre_extra</b> structure contains the following fields:
89<pre>
90  <i>flags</i>            Bits indicating which fields are set
91  <i>study_data</i>       Opaque data from <b>pcre[16|32]_study()</b>
92  <i>match_limit</i>      Limit on internal resource use
93  <i>match_limit_recursion</i>  Limit on internal recursion depth
94  <i>callout_data</i>     Opaque data passed back to callouts
95  <i>tables</i>           Points to character tables or is NULL
96  <i>mark</i>             For passing back a *MARK pointer
97  <i>executable_jit</i>   Opaque data from JIT compilation
98</pre>
99The flag bits are PCRE_EXTRA_STUDY_DATA, PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT,
100PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION, PCRE_EXTRA_CALLOUT_DATA,
101PCRE_EXTRA_TABLES, PCRE_EXTRA_MARK and PCRE_EXTRA_EXECUTABLE_JIT.
102</P>
103<P>
104There is a complete description of the PCRE native API in the
105<a href="pcreapi.html"><b>pcreapi</b></a>
106page and a description of the POSIX API in the
107<a href="pcreposix.html"><b>pcreposix</b></a>
108page.
109<p>
110Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
111</p>
112