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PCRE(3) 		    Library Functions Manual			 PCRE(3)

NAME
     PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions

     #include <pcre.h>

PCRE 16-BIT API BASIC FUNCTIONS
     pcre16 *pcre16_compile(PCRE_SPTR16 pattern, int options,
	  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);

     pcre16_extra *pcre16_study(const pcre16 *code, int options,
	  const char **errptr);

     void pcre16_free_study(pcre16_extra *extra);

     int pcre16_exec(const pcre16 *code, const pcre16_extra *extra,
	  PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int length, int startoffset,
	  int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize);

     int pcre16_dfa_exec(const pcre16 *code, const pcre16_extra *extra,
	  PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int length, int startoffset,
	  int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize,
	  int *workspace, int wscount);

PCRE 16-BIT API STRING EXTRACTION FUNCTIONS
     int pcre16_copy_named_substring(const pcre16 *code,
	  PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int *ovector,
	  int stringcount, PCRE_SPTR16 stringname,
	  PCRE_UCHAR16 *buffer, int buffersize);

     int pcre16_copy_substring(PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int *ovector,
	  int stringcount, int stringnumber, PCRE_UCHAR16 *buffer,
	  int buffersize);

     int pcre16_get_named_substring(const pcre16 *code,
	  PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int *ovector,
	  int stringcount, PCRE_SPTR16 stringname,
	  PCRE_SPTR16 *stringptr);

     int pcre16_get_stringnumber(const pcre16 *code,
	  PCRE_SPTR16 name);

     int pcre16_get_stringtable_entries(const pcre16 *code,
	  PCRE_SPTR16 name, PCRE_UCHAR16 **first, PCRE_UCHAR16 **last);

     int pcre16_get_substring(PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int *ovector,
	  int stringcount, int stringnumber,
	  PCRE_SPTR16 *stringptr);

     int pcre16_get_substring_list(PCRE_SPTR16 subject,
	  int *ovector, int stringcount, PCRE_SPTR16 **listptr);

     void pcre16_free_substring(PCRE_SPTR16 stringptr);

     void pcre16_free_substring_list(PCRE_SPTR16 *stringptr);

PCRE 16-BIT API AUXILIARY FUNCTIONS
     pcre16_jit_stack *pcre16_jit_stack_alloc(int startsize, int maxsize);

     void pcre16_jit_stack_free(pcre16_jit_stack *stack);

     void pcre16_assign_jit_stack(pcre16_extra *extra,
	  pcre16_jit_callback callback, void *data);

     const unsigned char *pcre16_maketables(void);

     int pcre16_fullinfo(const pcre16 *code, const pcre16_extra *extra,
	  int what, void *where);

     int pcre16_refcount(pcre16 *code, int adjust);

     int pcre16_config(int what, void *where);

     const char *pcre16_version(void);

     int pcre16_pattern_to_host_byte_order(pcre16 *code,
	  pcre16_extra *extra, const unsigned char *tables);

PCRE 16-BIT API INDIRECTED FUNCTIONS
     void *(*pcre16_malloc)(size_t);

     void (*pcre16_free)(void *);

     void *(*pcre16_stack_malloc)(size_t);

     void (*pcre16_stack_free)(void *);

     int (*pcre16_callout)(pcre16_callout_block *);

PCRE 16-BIT API 16-BIT-ONLY FUNCTION
     int pcre16_utf16_to_host_byte_order(PCRE_UCHAR16 *output,
	  PCRE_SPTR16 input, int length, int *byte_order,
	  int keep_boms);

THE PCRE 16-BIT LIBRARY
     Starting  with  release 8.30, it is possible to compile a PCRE library that
     supports 16-bit character strings, including UTF-16 strings, as well as  or
     instead  of  the  original  8-bit library. The majority of the work to make
     this possible was done by Zoltan Herczeg. The two libraries contain identi-
     cal sets of functions, used in exactly the same way. Only the names of  the
     functions	and the data types of their arguments and results are different.
     To avoid over-complication and reduce the documentation  maintenance  load,
     most of the PCRE documentation describes the 8-bit library, with only occa-
     sional  references  to the 16-bit library. This page describes what is dif-
     ferent when you use the 16-bit library.

     WARNING: A single application can be linked with both  libraries,	but  you
     must take care when processing any particular pattern to use functions from
     just one library. For example, if you want to study a pattern that was com-
     piled  with  pcre16_compile(),  you  must	do  so	with pcre16_study(), not
     pcre_study(), and you must free the study data with pcre16_free_study().

THE HEADER FILE
     There is only one header file, pcre.h. It contains prototypes for	all  the
     functions	in  all  libraries, as well as definitions of flags, structures,
     error codes, etc.

THE LIBRARY NAME
     In Unix-like systems, the 16-bit library is called libpcre16, and can  nor-
     mally  be accesss by adding -lpcre16 to the command for linking an applica-
     tion that uses PCRE.

STRING TYPES
     In the 8-bit library, strings are passed to PCRE library functions as  vec-
     tors  of bytes with the C type "char *". In the 16-bit library, strings are
     passed as vectors of unsigned 16-bit  quantities.	The  macro  PCRE_UCHAR16
     specifies	an  appropriate  data type, and PCRE_SPTR16 is defined as "const
     PCRE_UCHAR16 *". In very many environments, "short int" is  a  16-bit  data
     type.  When PCRE is built, it defines PCRE_UCHAR16 as "unsigned short int",
     but checks that it really is a 16-bit data type. If it is	not,  the  build
     fails with an error message telling the maintainer to modify the definition
     appropriately.

STRUCTURE TYPES
     The  types  of the opaque structures that are used for compiled 16-bit pat-
     terns and JIT stacks are pcre16 and pcre16_jit_stack respectively. The type
     of the user-accessible structure that  is	returned  by  pcre16_study()  is
     pcre16_extra,  and  the type of the structure that is used for passing data
     to a callout function is pcre16_callout_block. These structures contain the
     same fields, with the same names, as their  8-bit	counterparts.  The  only
     difference  is  that  pointers  to  character strings are 16-bit instead of
     8-bit types.

16-BIT FUNCTIONS
     For every function in the 8-bit library there is a  corresponding	function
     in  the  16-bit  library  with  a	name that starts with pcre16_ instead of
     pcre_. The prototypes are listed above. In addition,  there  is  one  extra
     function,	pcre16_utf16_to_host_byte_order().  This  is  a utility function
     that converts a UTF-16 character string to host byte  order  if  necessary.
     The other 16-bit functions expect the strings they are passed to be in host
     byte order.

     The  input  and  output  arguments of pcre16_utf16_to_host_byte_order() may
     point to the same address, that is, conversion in place is  supported.  The
     output buffer must be at least as long as the input.

     The  length argument specifies the number of 16-bit data units in the input
     string; a negative value specifies a zero-terminated string.

     If byte_order is NULL, it is assumed that the string  starts  off	in  host
     byte  order. This may be changed by byte-order marks (BOMs) anywhere in the
     string (commonly as the first character).

     If byte_order is not NULL, a non-zero value of  the  integer  to  which  it
     points  means  that  the input starts off in host byte order, otherwise the
     opposite order is assumed. Again, BOMs in the string can change  this.  The
     final byte order is passed back at the end of processing.

     If  keep_boms  is	not zero, byte-order mark characters (0xfeff) are copied
     into the output string. Otherwise they are discarded.

     The result of the function is the number of 16-bit units  placed  into  the
     output  buffer, including the zero terminator if the string was zero-termi-
     nated.

SUBJECT STRING OFFSETS
     The lengths and starting offsets of subject strings must  be  specified  in
     16-bit data units, and the offsets within subject strings that are returned
     by the matching functions are in also 16-bit units rather than bytes.

NAMED SUBPATTERNS
     The  name-to-number  translation table that is maintained for named subpat-
     terns uses 16-bit characters. The pcre16_get_stringtable_entries() function
     returns the length of each entry in the table as the number of 16-bit  data
     units.

OPTION NAMES
     There are two new general option names, PCRE_UTF16 and PCRE_NO_UTF16_CHECK,
     which  correspond to PCRE_UTF8 and PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK in the 8-bit library.
     In fact, these new options define the same bits in the options word.  There
     is  a  discussion	about  the validity of UTF-16 strings in the pcreunicode
     page.

     For the pcre16_config() function there is an option PCRE_CONFIG_UTF16  that
     returns  1  if UTF-16 support is configured, otherwise 0. If this option is
     given to pcre_config() or pcre32_config(), or if  the  PCRE_CONFIG_UTF8  or
     PCRE_CONFIG_UTF32	option	is  given  to pcre16_config(), the result is the
     PCRE_ERROR_BADOPTION error.

CHARACTER CODES
     In 16-bit mode, when PCRE_UTF16 is not set, character values are treated in
     the same way as in 8-bit, non UTF-8 mode, except, of course, that they  can
     range from 0 to 0xffff instead of 0 to 0xff. Character types for characters
     less than 0xff can therefore be influenced by the locale in the same way as
     before.   Characters  greater  than  0xff have only one case, and no "type"
     (such as letter or digit).

     In UTF-16 mode, the character code is Unicode, in the range 0 to  0x10ffff,
     with  the	exception  of values in the range 0xd800 to 0xdfff because those
     are "surrogate" values that are used in pairs to encode values greater than
     0xffff.

     A UTF-16 string can indicate its endianness by  special  code  knows  as  a
     byte-order  mark  (BOM).  The  PCRE functions do not handle this, expecting
     strings  to  be  in  host	 byte	order.	 A   utility   function   called
     pcre16_utf16_to_host_byte_order()	is  provided  to  help	with  this  (see
     above).

ERROR NAMES
     The errors PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF16_OFFSET and PCRE_ERROR_SHORTUTF16  correspond
     to  their	8-bit counterparts. The error PCRE_ERROR_BADMODE is given when a
     compiled pattern is passed to a function that  processes  patterns  in  the
     other  mode,  for	example,  if  a  pattern compiled with pcre_compile() is
     passed to pcre16_exec().

     There are new error codes whose names begin with PCRE_UTF16_ERR for invalid
     UTF-16 strings, corresponding to the PCRE_UTF8_ERR codes for UTF-8  strings
     that  are described in the section entitled "Reason codes for invalid UTF-8
     strings" in the main pcreapi page. The UTF-16 errors are:

       PCRE_UTF16_ERR1	Missing low surrogate at end of string
       PCRE_UTF16_ERR2	Invalid low surrogate follows high surrogate
       PCRE_UTF16_ERR3	Isolated low surrogate
       PCRE_UTF16_ERR4	Non-character

ERROR TEXTS
     If there is an error while compiling a pattern,  the  error  text	that  is
     passed  back  by  pcre16_compile()  or  pcre16_compile2() is still an 8-bit
     character string, zero-terminated.

CALLOUTS
     The subject and mark fields in the callout block that is passed to a  call-
     out function point to 16-bit vectors.

TESTING
     The  pcretest  program  continues	to  operate  with 8-bit input and output
     files, but it can be used for testing the 16-bit library. If it is run with
     the command line option -16, patterns and	subject  strings  are  converted
     from  8-bit  to  16-bit before being passed to PCRE, and the 16-bit library
     functions are used instead of the 8-bit ones. Returned 16-bit  strings  are
     converted	to  8-bit for output. If both the 8-bit and the 32-bit libraries
     were not compiled, pcretest defaults to 16-bit and the -16  option  is  ig-
     nored.

     When PCRE is being built, the RunTest script that is called by "make check"
     uses  the	pcretest  -C  option  to discover which of the 8-bit, 16-bit and
     32-bit libraries has been built, and runs the tests appropriately.

NOT SUPPORTED IN 16-BIT MODE
     Not all the features of the 8-bit library are available with the 16-bit li-
     brary. The C++ and POSIX wrapper functions support only the 8-bit	library,
     and the pcregrep program is at present 8-bit only.

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

REVISION
     Last updated: 12 May 2013
     Copyright (c) 1997-2013 University of Cambridge.

PCRE 8.33			   12 May 2013				 PCRE(3)

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