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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 &#60;pcre.h&#62;</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<br>
26<br>
27<b>pcre16 *pcre16_compile(PCRE_SPTR16 <i>pattern</i>, int <i>options</i>,</b>
28<b>     const char **<i>errptr</i>, int *<i>erroffset</i>,</b>
29<b>     const unsigned char *<i>tableptr</i>);</b>
30<br>
31<br>
32<b>pcre32 *pcre32_compile(PCRE_SPTR32 <i>pattern</i>, int <i>options</i>,</b>
33<b>     const char **<i>errptr</i>, int *<i>erroffset</i>,</b>
34<b>     const unsigned char *<i>tableptr</i>);</b>
35</P>
36<br><b>
37DESCRIPTION
38</b><br>
39<P>
40This function compiles a regular expression into an internal form. It is the
41same as <b>pcre[16|32]_compile2()</b>, except for the absence of the
42<i>errorcodeptr</i> argument. Its arguments are:
43<pre>
44  <i>pattern</i>       A zero-terminated string containing the
45                  regular expression to be compiled
46  <i>options</i>       Zero or more option bits
47  <i>errptr</i>        Where to put an error message
48  <i>erroffset</i>     Offset in pattern where error was found
49  <i>tableptr</i>      Pointer to character tables, or NULL to
50                  use the built-in default
51</pre>
52The option bits are:
53<pre>
54  PCRE_ANCHORED           Force pattern anchoring
55  PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT       Compile automatic callouts
56  PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF        \R matches only CR, LF, or CRLF
57  PCRE_BSR_UNICODE        \R matches all Unicode line endings
58  PCRE_CASELESS           Do caseless matching
59  PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY     $ not to match newline at end
60  PCRE_DOTALL             . matches anything including NL
61  PCRE_DUPNAMES           Allow duplicate names for subpatterns
62  PCRE_EXTENDED           Ignore white space and # comments
63  PCRE_EXTRA              PCRE extra features
64                            (not much use currently)
65  PCRE_FIRSTLINE          Force matching to be before newline
66  PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT  JavaScript compatibility
67  PCRE_MULTILINE          ^ and $ match newlines within data
68  PCRE_NEVER_UTF          Lock out UTF, e.g. via (*UTF)
69  PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY        Recognize any Unicode newline sequence
70  PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF    Recognize CR, LF, and CRLF as newline
71                            sequences
72  PCRE_NEWLINE_CR         Set CR as the newline sequence
73  PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF       Set CRLF as the newline sequence
74  PCRE_NEWLINE_LF         Set LF as the newline sequence
75  PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE    Disable numbered capturing paren-
76                            theses (named ones available)
77  PCRE_NO_AUTO_POSSESS    Disable auto-possessification
78  PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE  Disable match-time start optimizations
79  PCRE_NO_UTF16_CHECK     Do not check the pattern for UTF-16
80                            validity (only relevant if
81                            PCRE_UTF16 is set)
82  PCRE_NO_UTF32_CHECK     Do not check the pattern for UTF-32
83                            validity (only relevant if
84                            PCRE_UTF32 is set)
85  PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK      Do not check the pattern for UTF-8
86                            validity (only relevant if
87                            PCRE_UTF8 is set)
88  PCRE_UCP                Use Unicode properties for \d, \w, etc.
89  PCRE_UNGREEDY           Invert greediness of quantifiers
90  PCRE_UTF16              Run in <b>pcre16_compile()</b> UTF-16 mode
91  PCRE_UTF32              Run in <b>pcre32_compile()</b> UTF-32 mode
92  PCRE_UTF8               Run in <b>pcre_compile()</b> UTF-8 mode
93</pre>
94PCRE must be built with UTF support in order to use PCRE_UTF8/16/32 and
95PCRE_NO_UTF8/16/32_CHECK, and with UCP support if PCRE_UCP is used.
96</P>
97<P>
98The yield of the function is a pointer to a private data structure that
99contains the compiled pattern, or NULL if an error was detected. Note that
100compiling regular expressions with one version of PCRE for use with a different
101version is not guaranteed to work and may cause crashes.
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