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PCRESAMPLE(3)		   Library Functions Manual		 PCRESAMPLE(3)

NAME
       PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions

PCRE SAMPLE PROGRAM
       A simple, complete demonstration	program, to get	you started with using
       PCRE,  is  supplied  in the file	pcredemo.c in the PCRE distribution. A
       listing of this program is given	in the pcredemo	documentation. If  you
       do  not have a copy of the PCRE distribution, you can save this listing
       to re-create pcredemo.c.

       The demonstration program, which	uses the original PCRE 8-bit  library,
       compiles	the regular expression that is its first argument, and matches
       it  against  the	subject	string in its second argument. No PCRE options
       are set,	and default character tables are used. If  matching  succeeds,
       the  program  outputs the portion of the	subject	that matched, together
       with the	contents of any	captured substrings.

       If the -g option	is given on the	command	line, the program then goes on
       to check	for further matches of the same	regular	expression in the same
       subject string. The logic is a little bit tricky	because	of the	possi-
       bility  of  matching an empty string. Comments in the code explain what
       is going	on.

       If PCRE is installed in the standard include  and  library  directories
       for your	operating system, you should be	able to	compile	the demonstra-
       tion program using this command:

	 gcc -o	pcredemo pcredemo.c -lpcre

       If  PCRE	is installed elsewhere,	you may	need to	add additional options
       to the command line. For	example, on a Unix-like	system that  has  PCRE
       installed  in /usr/local, you can compile the demonstration program us-
       ing a command like this:

	 gcc -o	pcredemo -I/usr/local/include pcredemo.c \
	     -L/usr/local/lib -lpcre

       In a Windows environment, if you	want to	statically  link  the  program
       against a non-dll pcre.a	file, you must uncomment the line that defines
       PCRE_STATIC  before  including  pcre.h, because otherwise the pcre_mal-
       loc()  and  pcre_free()	exported  functions  will  be  declared	 __de-
       clspec(dllimport), with unwanted	results.

       Once  you  have	compiled and linked the	demonstration program, you can
       run simple tests	like this:

	 ./pcredemo 'cat|dog' 'the cat sat on the mat'
	 ./pcredemo -g 'cat|dog' 'the dog sat on the cat'

       Note that there is a  much  more	 comprehensive	test  program,	called
       pcretest,  which	 supports many more facilities for testing regular ex-
       pressions and both PCRE libraries. The pcredemo program is provided  as
       a simple	coding example.

       If  you	try to run pcredemo when PCRE is not installed in the standard
       library directory, you may get an error like  this  on  some  operating
       systems (e.g. Solaris):

	 ld.so.1: a.out: fatal:	libpcre.so.0: open failed: No such file	or di-
       rectory

       This  is	 caused	 by the	way shared library support works on those sys-
       tems. You need to add

	 -R/usr/local/lib

       (for example) to	the compile command to get round this problem.

AUTHOR
       Philip Hazel
       University Computing Service
       Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.

REVISION
       Last updated: 10	January	2012
       Copyright (c) 1997-2012 University of Cambridge.

PCRE 8.30			10 January 2012			 PCRESAMPLE(3)

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