Perl-compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE)

The HTML documentation for PCRE consists of a number of pages that are listed below in alphabetical order. If you are new to PCRE, please read the first one first.

pcre   Introductory page
pcre-config   Information about the installation configuration
pcre16   Discussion of the 16-bit PCRE library
pcre32   Discussion of the 32-bit PCRE library
pcreapi   PCRE's native API
pcrebuild   Building PCRE
pcrecallout   The callout facility
pcrecompat   Compability with Perl
pcrecpp   The C++ wrapper for the PCRE library
pcredemo   A demonstration C program that uses the PCRE library
pcregrep   The pcregrep command
pcrejit   Discussion of the just-in-time optimization support
pcrelimits   Details of size and other limits
pcrematching   Discussion of the two matching algorithms
pcrepartial   Using PCRE for partial matching
pcrepattern   Specification of the regular expressions supported by PCRE
pcreperform   Some comments on performance
pcreposix   The POSIX API to the PCRE 8-bit library
pcreprecompile   How to save and re-use compiled patterns
pcresample   Discussion of the pcredemo program
pcrestack   Discussion of PCRE's stack usage
pcresyntax   Syntax quick-reference summary
pcretest   The pcretest command for testing PCRE
pcreunicode   Discussion of Unicode and UTF-8/UTF-16/UTF-32 support

There are also individual pages that summarize the interface for each function in the library. There is a single page for each triple of 8-bit/16-bit/32-bit functions.

pcre_assign_jit_stack   Assign stack for JIT matching
pcre_compile   Compile a regular expression
pcre_compile2   Compile a regular expression (alternate interface)
pcre_config   Show build-time configuration options
pcre_copy_named_substring   Extract named substring into given buffer
pcre_copy_substring   Extract numbered substring into given buffer
pcre_dfa_exec   Match a compiled pattern to a subject string (DFA algorithm; not Perl compatible)
pcre_exec   Match a compiled pattern to a subject string (Perl compatible)
pcre_free_study   Free study data
pcre_free_substring   Free extracted substring
pcre_free_substring_list   Free list of extracted substrings
pcre_fullinfo   Extract information about a pattern
pcre_get_named_substring   Extract named substring into new memory
pcre_get_stringnumber   Convert captured string name to number
pcre_get_stringtable_entries   Find table entries for given string name
pcre_get_substring   Extract numbered substring into new memory
pcre_get_substring_list   Extract all substrings into new memory
pcre_jit_exec   Fast path interface to JIT matching
pcre_jit_stack_alloc   Create a stack for JIT matching
pcre_jit_stack_free   Free a JIT matching stack
pcre_maketables   Build character tables in current locale
pcre_pattern_to_host_byte_order   Convert compiled pattern to host byte order if necessary
pcre_refcount   Maintain reference count in compiled pattern
pcre_study   Study a compiled pattern
pcre_utf16_to_host_byte_order   Convert UTF-16 string to host byte order if necessary
pcre_utf32_to_host_byte_order   Convert UTF-32 string to host byte order if necessary
pcre_version   Return PCRE version and release date