PCRE_COMPILE2(3)

💖 PCRE_COMPILE2 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the PCRE_COMPILE2(3) page, straight out of the Library Functions Manual ✨ this is the one where we compile regexes and also get told exactly what went wrong, so pull up a chair 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

PCRE — Perl-compatible regular expressions 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

no cap, this is literally the whole vibe:

#include <pcre.h>

pcre *pcre_compile2(const char *pattern, int options,
     int *errorcodeptr,
     const char **errptr, int *erroffset,
     const unsigned char *tableptr);

pcre16 *pcre16_compile2(PCRE_SPTR16 pattern, int options,
     int *errorcodeptr,
     const char **errptr, int *erroffset,
     const unsigned char *tableptr);

pcre32 *pcre32_compile2(PCRE_SPTR32 pattern, int options,
     int *errorcodeptr,£
     const char **errptr, int *erroffset,
     const unsigned char *tableptr);

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so this function compiles a regular expression into an internal form 🎀 it's the same as pcre[16|32]_compile(), except it's got one extra little bestie along for the ride: the errorcodeptr argument 🫶

the arguments, let's go:

• pattern — A zero-terminated string containing the regular expression to be compiled ✨
• options — Zero or more option bits 👑
• errorcodeptr — Where to put an error code 🚨
• 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 🎀

one bullet per bit, no skipping, we don't do that here:

• 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 parentheses (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 pcre16_compile() in UTF-16 mode
• PCRE_UTF32 — Run pcre32_compile() in UTF-32 mode
• PCRE_UTF8 — Run pcre_compile() in UTF-8 mode

🚨 bestie, real talk: 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. no build flags, no vibes. 💀

💜 What You Get Back 💜

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 😭

⚠️ and listen: compiling regular expressions with one version of PCRE for use with a different version is not guaranteed to work and may cause crashes 💥 fr fr, don't do it.

there's a complete description of the PCRE native API in the pcreapi page 📚 and a description of the POSIX API in the pcreposix page 🌸

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• pcreapi — the full native API tea ☕
• pcreposix — the POSIX API tea ☕

and that's the whole page, bestie!! compiled with love by PCRE 8.34, dated 01 October 2013 🎀 mwah, go forth and match some patterns 💅✨🦋