.TH PCRE_COMPILE 3

.SH NAME

PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions

.SH SYNOPSIS

.rs

.sp

.B #include <pcre.h>

.PP

.SM

.B pcre *pcre_compile(const char *\fIpattern\fP, int \fIoptions\fP,

.ti +5n

.B const char **\fIerrptr\fP, int *\fIerroffset\fP,

.ti +5n

.B const unsigned char *\fItableptr\fP);

.

.SH DESCRIPTION

.rs

.sp

This function compiles a regular expression into an internal form. It is the

same as \fBpcre_compile2()\fP, except for the absence of the \fIerrorcodeptr\fP

argument. Its arguments are:

.sp

  \fIpattern\fR       A zero-terminated string containing the

                  regular expression to be compiled

  \fIoptions\fR       Zero or more option bits

  \fIerrptr\fR        Where to put an error message

  \fIerroffset\fR     Offset in pattern where error was found

  \fItableptr\fR      Pointer to character tables, or NULL to

                  use the built-in default

.sp

The option bits are:

.sp

  PCRE_ANCHORED           Force pattern anchoring

  PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT       Compile automatic callouts

  PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF        \eR matches only CR, LF, or CRLF

  PCRE_BSR_UNICODE        \eR matches all Unicode line endings

  PCRE_CASELESS           Do caseless matching

  PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY     $ not to match newline at end

  PCRE_DOTALL             . matches anything including NL

  PCRE_DUPNAMES           Allow duplicate names for subpatterns

  PCRE_EXTENDED           Ignore whitespace and # comments

  PCRE_EXTRA              PCRE extra features

                            (not much use currently)

  PCRE_FIRSTLINE          Force matching to be before newline

  PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT  JavaScript compatibility

  PCRE_MULTILINE          ^ and $ match newlines within data

  PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY        Recognize any Unicode newline sequence

  PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF    Recognize CR, LF, and CRLF as newline

                            sequences

  PCRE_NEWLINE_CR         Set CR as the newline sequence

  PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF       Set CRLF as the newline sequence

  PCRE_NEWLINE_LF         Set LF as the newline sequence

  PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE    Disable numbered capturing paren-

                            theses (named ones available)

  PCRE_UNGREEDY           Invert greediness of quantifiers

  PCRE_UTF8               Run in UTF-8 mode

  PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK      Do not check the pattern for UTF-8

                            validity (only relevant if

                            PCRE_UTF8 is set)

.sp

PCRE must be built with UTF-8 support in order to use PCRE_UTF8 and

PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK.

.P

The yield of the function is a pointer to a private data structure that

contains the compiled pattern, or NULL if an error was detected. Note that

compiling regular expressions with one version of PCRE for use with a different

version is not guaranteed to work and may cause crashes.

.P

There is a complete description of the PCRE native API in the

.\" HREF

\fBpcreapi\fR

.\"

page and a description of the POSIX API in the

.\" HREF

\fBpcreposix\fR

.\"

page.