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      3 <title>pcre_exec specification</title>
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      6 <h1>pcre_exec man page</h1>
      7 <p>
      8 Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
      9 </p>
     10 <p>
     11 This page is part of the PCRE HTML documentation. It was generated automatically
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     13 man page, in case the conversion went wrong.
     14 <br>
     15 <br><b>
     16 SYNOPSIS
     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>
     37 DESCRIPTION
     38 </b><br>
     39 <P>
     40 This function matches a compiled regular expression against a given subject
     41 string, using a matching algorithm that is similar to Perl's. It returns
     42 offsets 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>
     54 The 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
     56 for <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>
     86 For details of partial matching, see the
     87 <a href="pcrepartial.html"><b>pcrepartial</b></a>
     88 page. 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>
     99 The flag bits are PCRE_EXTRA_STUDY_DATA, PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT,
    100 PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION, PCRE_EXTRA_CALLOUT_DATA,
    101 PCRE_EXTRA_TABLES, PCRE_EXTRA_MARK and PCRE_EXTRA_EXECUTABLE_JIT.
    102 </P>
    103 <P>
    104 There is a complete description of the PCRE native API in the
    105 <a href="pcreapi.html"><b>pcreapi</b></a>
    106 page and a description of the POSIX API in the
    107 <a href="pcreposix.html"><b>pcreposix</b></a>
    108 page.
    109 <p>
    110 Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
    111 </p>
    112