pcre_compile - Man Page

#include <pcre.h>

pcre *pcre_compile(const char *pattern, int options,
     const char **errptr, int *erroffset,
     const unsigned char *tableptr);

pcre16 *pcre16_compile(PCRE_SPTR16 pattern, int options,
     const char **errptr, int *erroffset,
     const unsigned char *tableptr);

pcre32 *pcre32_compile(PCRE_SPTR32 pattern, int options,
     const char **errptr, int *erroffset,
     const unsigned char *tableptr);

This function compiles a regular expression into an internal form. It is the same as pcre[16|32]_compile2(), except for the absence of the errorcodeptr argument. Its arguments are:

 pattern       A zero-terminated string containing the
                 regular expression to be compiled
 options       Zero or more option bits
 errptr        Where to put an error message
 erroffset     Offset in pattern where error was found
 tableptr      Pointer to character tables, or NULL to
                 use the built-in default

The option bits are:

 PCRE_ANCHORED           Force pattern anchoring
 PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT       Compile automatic callouts
 PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF        \R matches only CR, LF, or CRLF
 PCRE_BSR_UNICODE        \R 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 white space 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_NEVER_UTF          Lock out UTF, e.g. via (*UTF)
 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_NO_AUTO_POSSESS    Disable auto-possessification
 PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE  Disable match-time start optimizations
 PCRE_NO_UTF16_CHECK     Do not check the pattern for UTF-16
                           validity (only relevant if
                           PCRE_UTF16 is set)
 PCRE_NO_UTF32_CHECK     Do not check the pattern for UTF-32
                           validity (only relevant if
                           PCRE_UTF32 is set)
 PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK      Do not check the pattern for UTF-8
                           validity (only relevant if
                           PCRE_UTF8 is set)
 PCRE_UCP                Use Unicode properties for \d, \w, etc.
 PCRE_UNGREEDY           Invert greediness of quantifiers
 PCRE_UTF16              Run in pcre16_compile() UTF-16 mode
 PCRE_UTF32              Run in pcre32_compile() UTF-32 mode
 PCRE_UTF8               Run in pcre_compile() UTF-8 mode

PCRE must be built with UTF support in order to use PCRE_UTF8/16/32 and PCRE_NO_UTF8/16/32_CHECK, and with UCP support if PCRE_UCP is used.

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.

There is a complete description of the PCRE native API in the pcreapi page and a description of the POSIX API in the pcreposix page.

The man pages pcre16_compile(3) and pcre32_compile(3) are aliases of pcre_compile(3).