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Tristan Matthews04616462013-11-14 16:09:34 -05001README file for PCRE (Perl-compatible regular expression library)
2-----------------------------------------------------------------
3
4The latest release of PCRE is always available in three alternative formats
5from:
6
7 ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.tar.gz
8 ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.tar.bz2
9 ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.zip
10
11There is a mailing list for discussion about the development of PCRE at
12
13 pcre-dev@exim.org
14
15Please read the NEWS file if you are upgrading from a previous release.
16The contents of this README file are:
17
18 The PCRE APIs
19 Documentation for PCRE
20 Contributions by users of PCRE
21 Building PCRE on non-Unix systems
22 Building PCRE on Unix-like systems
23 Retrieving configuration information on Unix-like systems
24 Shared libraries on Unix-like systems
25 Cross-compiling on Unix-like systems
26 Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)
27 Using PCRE from MySQL
28 Making new tarballs
29 Testing PCRE
30 Character tables
31 File manifest
32
33
34The PCRE APIs
35-------------
36
37PCRE is written in C, and it has its own API. The distribution also includes a
38set of C++ wrapper functions (see the pcrecpp man page for details), courtesy
39of Google Inc.
40
41In addition, there is a set of C wrapper functions that are based on the POSIX
42regular expression API (see the pcreposix man page). These end up in the
43library called libpcreposix. Note that this just provides a POSIX calling
44interface to PCRE; the regular expressions themselves still follow Perl syntax
45and semantics. The POSIX API is restricted, and does not give full access to
46all of PCRE's facilities.
47
48The header file for the POSIX-style functions is called pcreposix.h. The
49official POSIX name is regex.h, but I did not want to risk possible problems
50with existing files of that name by distributing it that way. To use PCRE with
51an existing program that uses the POSIX API, pcreposix.h will have to be
52renamed or pointed at by a link.
53
54If you are using the POSIX interface to PCRE and there is already a POSIX regex
55library installed on your system, as well as worrying about the regex.h header
56file (as mentioned above), you must also take care when linking programs to
57ensure that they link with PCRE's libpcreposix library. Otherwise they may pick
58up the POSIX functions of the same name from the other library.
59
60One way of avoiding this confusion is to compile PCRE with the addition of
61-Dregcomp=PCREregcomp (and similarly for the other POSIX functions) to the
62compiler flags (CFLAGS if you are using "configure" -- see below). This has the
63effect of renaming the functions so that the names no longer clash. Of course,
64you have to do the same thing for your applications, or write them using the
65new names.
66
67
68Documentation for PCRE
69----------------------
70
71If you install PCRE in the normal way on a Unix-like system, you will end up
72with a set of man pages whose names all start with "pcre". The one that is just
73called "pcre" lists all the others. In addition to these man pages, the PCRE
74documentation is supplied in two other forms:
75
76 1. There are files called doc/pcre.txt, doc/pcregrep.txt, and
77 doc/pcretest.txt in the source distribution. The first of these is a
78 concatenation of the text forms of all the section 3 man pages except
79 those that summarize individual functions. The other two are the text
80 forms of the section 1 man pages for the pcregrep and pcretest commands.
81 These text forms are provided for ease of scanning with text editors or
82 similar tools. They are installed in <prefix>/share/doc/pcre, where
83 <prefix> is the installation prefix (defaulting to /usr/local).
84
85 2. A set of files containing all the documentation in HTML form, hyperlinked
86 in various ways, and rooted in a file called index.html, is distributed in
87 doc/html and installed in <prefix>/share/doc/pcre/html.
88
89Users of PCRE have contributed files containing the documentation for various
90releases in CHM format. These can be found in the Contrib directory of the FTP
91site (see next section).
92
93
94Contributions by users of PCRE
95------------------------------
96
97You can find contributions from PCRE users in the directory
98
99 ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/Contrib
100
101There is a README file giving brief descriptions of what they are. Some are
102complete in themselves; others are pointers to URLs containing relevant files.
103Some of this material is likely to be well out-of-date. Several of the earlier
104contributions provided support for compiling PCRE on various flavours of
105Windows (I myself do not use Windows). Nowadays there is more Windows support
106in the standard distribution, so these contibutions have been archived.
107
108
109Building PCRE on non-Unix systems
110---------------------------------
111
112For a non-Unix system, please read the comments in the file NON-UNIX-USE,
113though if your system supports the use of "configure" and "make" you may be
114able to build PCRE in the same way as for Unix-like systems. PCRE can also be
115configured in many platform environments using the GUI facility provided by
116CMake's cmake-gui command. This creates Makefiles, solution files, etc.
117
118PCRE has been compiled on many different operating systems. It should be
119straightforward to build PCRE on any system that has a Standard C compiler and
120library, because it uses only Standard C functions.
121
122
123Building PCRE on Unix-like systems
124----------------------------------
125
126If you are using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC), please see the special note
127in the section entitled "Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)" below.
128
129The following instructions assume the use of the widely used "configure, make,
130make install" process. There is also support for CMake in the PCRE
131distribution; there are some comments about using CMake in the NON-UNIX-USE
132file, though it can also be used in Unix-like systems.
133
134To build PCRE on a Unix-like system, first run the "configure" command from the
135PCRE distribution directory, with your current directory set to the directory
136where you want the files to be created. This command is a standard GNU
137"autoconf" configuration script, for which generic instructions are supplied in
138the file INSTALL.
139
140Most commonly, people build PCRE within its own distribution directory, and in
141this case, on many systems, just running "./configure" is sufficient. However,
142the usual methods of changing standard defaults are available. For example:
143
144CFLAGS='-O2 -Wall' ./configure --prefix=/opt/local
145
146specifies that the C compiler should be run with the flags '-O2 -Wall' instead
147of the default, and that "make install" should install PCRE under /opt/local
148instead of the default /usr/local.
149
150If you want to build in a different directory, just run "configure" with that
151directory as current. For example, suppose you have unpacked the PCRE source
152into /source/pcre/pcre-xxx, but you want to build it in /build/pcre/pcre-xxx:
153
154cd /build/pcre/pcre-xxx
155/source/pcre/pcre-xxx/configure
156
157PCRE is written in C and is normally compiled as a C library. However, it is
158possible to build it as a C++ library, though the provided building apparatus
159does not have any features to support this.
160
161There are some optional features that can be included or omitted from the PCRE
162library. They are also documented in the pcrebuild man page.
163
164. By default, both shared and static libraries are built. You can change this
165 by adding one of these options to the "configure" command:
166
167 --disable-shared
168 --disable-static
169
170 (See also "Shared libraries on Unix-like systems" below.)
171
172. If you want to suppress the building of the C++ wrapper library, you can add
173 --disable-cpp to the "configure" command. Otherwise, when "configure" is run,
174 it will try to find a C++ compiler and C++ header files, and if it succeeds,
175 it will try to build the C++ wrapper.
176
177. If you want to include support for just-in-time compiling, which can give
178 large performance improvements on certain platforms, add --enable-jit to the
179 "configure" command. This support is available only for certain hardware
180 architectures. If you try to enable it on an unsupported architecture, there
181 will be a compile time error.
182
183. When JIT support is enabled, pcregrep automatically makes use of it, unless
184 you add --disable-pcregrep-jit to the "configure" command.
185
186. If you want to make use of the support for UTF-8 Unicode character strings in
187 PCRE, you must add --enable-utf8 to the "configure" command. Without it, the
188 code for handling UTF-8 is not included in the library. Even when included,
189 it still has to be enabled by an option at run time. When PCRE is compiled
190 with this option, its input can only either be ASCII or UTF-8, even when
191 running on EBCDIC platforms. It is not possible to use both --enable-utf8 and
192 --enable-ebcdic at the same time.
193
194. If, in addition to support for UTF-8 character strings, you want to include
195 support for the \P, \p, and \X sequences that recognize Unicode character
196 properties, you must add --enable-unicode-properties to the "configure"
197 command. This adds about 30K to the size of the library (in the form of a
198 property table); only the basic two-letter properties such as Lu are
199 supported.
200
201. You can build PCRE to recognize either CR or LF or the sequence CRLF or any
202 of the preceding, or any of the Unicode newline sequences as indicating the
203 end of a line. Whatever you specify at build time is the default; the caller
204 of PCRE can change the selection at run time. The default newline indicator
205 is a single LF character (the Unix standard). You can specify the default
206 newline indicator by adding --enable-newline-is-cr or --enable-newline-is-lf
207 or --enable-newline-is-crlf or --enable-newline-is-anycrlf or
208 --enable-newline-is-any to the "configure" command, respectively.
209
210 If you specify --enable-newline-is-cr or --enable-newline-is-crlf, some of
211 the standard tests will fail, because the lines in the test files end with
212 LF. Even if the files are edited to change the line endings, there are likely
213 to be some failures. With --enable-newline-is-anycrlf or
214 --enable-newline-is-any, many tests should succeed, but there may be some
215 failures.
216
217. By default, the sequence \R in a pattern matches any Unicode line ending
218 sequence. This is independent of the option specifying what PCRE considers to
219 be the end of a line (see above). However, the caller of PCRE can restrict \R
220 to match only CR, LF, or CRLF. You can make this the default by adding
221 --enable-bsr-anycrlf to the "configure" command (bsr = "backslash R").
222
223. When called via the POSIX interface, PCRE uses malloc() to get additional
224 storage for processing capturing parentheses if there are more than 10 of
225 them in a pattern. You can increase this threshold by setting, for example,
226
227 --with-posix-malloc-threshold=20
228
229 on the "configure" command.
230
231. PCRE has a counter that can be set to limit the amount of resources it uses.
232 If the limit is exceeded during a match, the match fails. The default is ten
233 million. You can change the default by setting, for example,
234
235 --with-match-limit=500000
236
237 on the "configure" command. This is just the default; individual calls to
238 pcre_exec() can supply their own value. There is more discussion on the
239 pcreapi man page.
240
241. There is a separate counter that limits the depth of recursive function calls
242 during a matching process. This also has a default of ten million, which is
243 essentially "unlimited". You can change the default by setting, for example,
244
245 --with-match-limit-recursion=500000
246
247 Recursive function calls use up the runtime stack; running out of stack can
248 cause programs to crash in strange ways. There is a discussion about stack
249 sizes in the pcrestack man page.
250
251. The default maximum compiled pattern size is around 64K. You can increase
252 this by adding --with-link-size=3 to the "configure" command. You can
253 increase it even more by setting --with-link-size=4, but this is unlikely
254 ever to be necessary. Increasing the internal link size will reduce
255 performance.
256
257. You can build PCRE so that its internal match() function that is called from
258 pcre_exec() does not call itself recursively. Instead, it uses memory blocks
259 obtained from the heap via the special functions pcre_stack_malloc() and
260 pcre_stack_free() to save data that would otherwise be saved on the stack. To
261 build PCRE like this, use
262
263 --disable-stack-for-recursion
264
265 on the "configure" command. PCRE runs more slowly in this mode, but it may be
266 necessary in environments with limited stack sizes. This applies only to the
267 normal execution of the pcre_exec() function; if JIT support is being
268 successfully used, it is not relevant. Equally, it does not apply to
269 pcre_dfa_exec(), which does not use deeply nested recursion. There is a
270 discussion about stack sizes in the pcrestack man page.
271
272. For speed, PCRE uses four tables for manipulating and identifying characters
273 whose code point values are less than 256. By default, it uses a set of
274 tables for ASCII encoding that is part of the distribution. If you specify
275
276 --enable-rebuild-chartables
277
278 a program called dftables is compiled and run in the default C locale when
279 you obey "make". It builds a source file called pcre_chartables.c. If you do
280 not specify this option, pcre_chartables.c is created as a copy of
281 pcre_chartables.c.dist. See "Character tables" below for further information.
282
283. It is possible to compile PCRE for use on systems that use EBCDIC as their
284 character code (as opposed to ASCII) by specifying
285
286 --enable-ebcdic
287
288 This automatically implies --enable-rebuild-chartables (see above). However,
289 when PCRE is built this way, it always operates in EBCDIC. It cannot support
290 both EBCDIC and UTF-8.
291
292. It is possible to compile pcregrep to use libz and/or libbz2, in order to
293 read .gz and .bz2 files (respectively), by specifying one or both of
294
295 --enable-pcregrep-libz
296 --enable-pcregrep-libbz2
297
298 Of course, the relevant libraries must be installed on your system.
299
300. The default size of internal buffer used by pcregrep can be set by, for
301 example:
302
303 --with-pcregrep-bufsize=50K
304
305 The default value is 20K.
306
307. It is possible to compile pcretest so that it links with the libreadline
308 library, by specifying
309
310 --enable-pcretest-libreadline
311
312 If this is done, when pcretest's input is from a terminal, it reads it using
313 the readline() function. This provides line-editing and history facilities.
314 Note that libreadline is GPL-licenced, so if you distribute a binary of
315 pcretest linked in this way, there may be licensing issues.
316
317 Setting this option causes the -lreadline option to be added to the pcretest
318 build. In many operating environments with a sytem-installed readline
319 library this is sufficient. However, in some environments (e.g. if an
320 unmodified distribution version of readline is in use), it may be necessary
321 to specify something like LIBS="-lncurses" as well. This is because, to quote
322 the readline INSTALL, "Readline uses the termcap functions, but does not link
323 with the termcap or curses library itself, allowing applications which link
324 with readline the to choose an appropriate library." If you get error
325 messages about missing functions tgetstr, tgetent, tputs, tgetflag, or tgoto,
326 this is the problem, and linking with the ncurses library should fix it.
327
328The "configure" script builds the following files for the basic C library:
329
330. Makefile the makefile that builds the library
331. config.h build-time configuration options for the library
332. pcre.h the public PCRE header file
333. pcre-config script that shows the building settings such as CFLAGS
334 that were set for "configure"
335. libpcre.pc ) data for the pkg-config command
336. libpcreposix.pc )
337. libtool script that builds shared and/or static libraries
338. RunTest script for running tests on the basic C library
339. RunGrepTest script for running tests on the pcregrep command
340
341Versions of config.h and pcre.h are distributed in the PCRE tarballs under the
342names config.h.generic and pcre.h.generic. These are provided for those who
343have to built PCRE without using "configure" or CMake. If you use "configure"
344or CMake, the .generic versions are not used.
345
346If a C++ compiler is found, the following files are also built:
347
348. libpcrecpp.pc data for the pkg-config command
349. pcrecpparg.h header file for calling PCRE via the C++ wrapper
350. pcre_stringpiece.h header for the C++ "stringpiece" functions
351
352The "configure" script also creates config.status, which is an executable
353script that can be run to recreate the configuration, and config.log, which
354contains compiler output from tests that "configure" runs.
355
356Once "configure" has run, you can run "make". It builds two libraries, called
357libpcre and libpcreposix, a test program called pcretest, and the pcregrep
358command. If a C++ compiler was found on your system, and you did not disable it
359with --disable-cpp, "make" also builds the C++ wrapper library, which is called
360libpcrecpp, and some test programs called pcrecpp_unittest,
361pcre_scanner_unittest, and pcre_stringpiece_unittest. If you enabled JIT
362support with --enable-jit, a test program called pcre_jit_test is also built.
363
364The command "make check" runs all the appropriate tests. Details of the PCRE
365tests are given below in a separate section of this document.
366
367You can use "make install" to install PCRE into live directories on your
368system. The following are installed (file names are all relative to the
369<prefix> that is set when "configure" is run):
370
371 Commands (bin):
372 pcretest
373 pcregrep
374 pcre-config
375
376 Libraries (lib):
377 libpcre
378 libpcreposix
379 libpcrecpp (if C++ support is enabled)
380
381 Configuration information (lib/pkgconfig):
382 libpcre.pc
383 libpcreposix.pc
384 libpcrecpp.pc (if C++ support is enabled)
385
386 Header files (include):
387 pcre.h
388 pcreposix.h
389 pcre_scanner.h )
390 pcre_stringpiece.h ) if C++ support is enabled
391 pcrecpp.h )
392 pcrecpparg.h )
393
394 Man pages (share/man/man{1,3}):
395 pcregrep.1
396 pcretest.1
397 pcre-config.1
398 pcre.3
399 pcre*.3 (lots more pages, all starting "pcre")
400
401 HTML documentation (share/doc/pcre/html):
402 index.html
403 *.html (lots more pages, hyperlinked from index.html)
404
405 Text file documentation (share/doc/pcre):
406 AUTHORS
407 COPYING
408 ChangeLog
409 LICENCE
410 NEWS
411 README
412 pcre.txt (a concatenation of the man(3) pages)
413 pcretest.txt the pcretest man page
414 pcregrep.txt the pcregrep man page
415 pcre-config.txt the pcre-config man page
416
417If you want to remove PCRE from your system, you can run "make uninstall".
418This removes all the files that "make install" installed. However, it does not
419remove any directories, because these are often shared with other programs.
420
421
422Retrieving configuration information on Unix-like systems
423---------------------------------------------------------
424
425Running "make install" installs the command pcre-config, which can be used to
426recall information about the PCRE configuration and installation. For example:
427
428 pcre-config --version
429
430prints the version number, and
431
432 pcre-config --libs
433
434outputs information about where the library is installed. This command can be
435included in makefiles for programs that use PCRE, saving the programmer from
436having to remember too many details.
437
438The pkg-config command is another system for saving and retrieving information
439about installed libraries. Instead of separate commands for each library, a
440single command is used. For example:
441
442 pkg-config --cflags pcre
443
444The data is held in *.pc files that are installed in a directory called
445<prefix>/lib/pkgconfig.
446
447
448Shared libraries on Unix-like systems
449-------------------------------------
450
451The default distribution builds PCRE as shared libraries and static libraries,
452as long as the operating system supports shared libraries. Shared library
453support relies on the "libtool" script which is built as part of the
454"configure" process.
455
456The libtool script is used to compile and link both shared and static
457libraries. They are placed in a subdirectory called .libs when they are newly
458built. The programs pcretest and pcregrep are built to use these uninstalled
459libraries (by means of wrapper scripts in the case of shared libraries). When
460you use "make install" to install shared libraries, pcregrep and pcretest are
461automatically re-built to use the newly installed shared libraries before being
462installed themselves. However, the versions left in the build directory still
463use the uninstalled libraries.
464
465To build PCRE using static libraries only you must use --disable-shared when
466configuring it. For example:
467
468./configure --prefix=/usr/gnu --disable-shared
469
470Then run "make" in the usual way. Similarly, you can use --disable-static to
471build only shared libraries.
472
473
474Cross-compiling on Unix-like systems
475------------------------------------
476
477You can specify CC and CFLAGS in the normal way to the "configure" command, in
478order to cross-compile PCRE for some other host. However, you should NOT
479specify --enable-rebuild-chartables, because if you do, the dftables.c source
480file is compiled and run on the local host, in order to generate the inbuilt
481character tables (the pcre_chartables.c file). This will probably not work,
482because dftables.c needs to be compiled with the local compiler, not the cross
483compiler.
484
485When --enable-rebuild-chartables is not specified, pcre_chartables.c is created
486by making a copy of pcre_chartables.c.dist, which is a default set of tables
487that assumes ASCII code. Cross-compiling with the default tables should not be
488a problem.
489
490If you need to modify the character tables when cross-compiling, you should
491move pcre_chartables.c.dist out of the way, then compile dftables.c by hand and
492run it on the local host to make a new version of pcre_chartables.c.dist.
493Then when you cross-compile PCRE this new version of the tables will be used.
494
495
496Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)
497----------------------------------
498
499Unless C++ support is disabled by specifying the "--disable-cpp" option of the
500"configure" script, you must include the "-AA" option in the CXXFLAGS
501environment variable in order for the C++ components to compile correctly.
502
503Also, note that the aCC compiler on PA-RISC platforms may have a defect whereby
504needed libraries fail to get included when specifying the "-AA" compiler
505option. If you experience unresolved symbols when linking the C++ programs,
506use the workaround of specifying the following environment variable prior to
507running the "configure" script:
508
509 CXXLDFLAGS="-lstd_v2 -lCsup_v2"
510
511
512Using Sun's compilers for Solaris
513---------------------------------
514
515A user reports that the following configurations work on Solaris 9 sparcv9 and
516Solaris 9 x86 (32-bit):
517
518 Solaris 9 sparcv9: ./configure --disable-cpp CC=/bin/cc CFLAGS="-m64 -g"
519 Solaris 9 x86: ./configure --disable-cpp CC=/bin/cc CFLAGS="-g"
520
521
522Using PCRE from MySQL
523---------------------
524
525On systems where both PCRE and MySQL are installed, it is possible to make use
526of PCRE from within MySQL, as an alternative to the built-in pattern matching.
527There is a web page that tells you how to do this:
528
529 http://www.mysqludf.org/lib_mysqludf_preg/index.php
530
531
532Making new tarballs
533-------------------
534
535The command "make dist" creates three PCRE tarballs, in tar.gz, tar.bz2, and
536zip formats. The command "make distcheck" does the same, but then does a trial
537build of the new distribution to ensure that it works.
538
539If you have modified any of the man page sources in the doc directory, you
540should first run the PrepareRelease script before making a distribution. This
541script creates the .txt and HTML forms of the documentation from the man pages.
542
543
544Testing PCRE
545------------
546
547To test the basic PCRE library on a Unix system, run the RunTest script that is
548created by the configuring process. There is also a script called RunGrepTest
549that tests the options of the pcregrep command. If the C++ wrapper library is
550built, three test programs called pcrecpp_unittest, pcre_scanner_unittest, and
551pcre_stringpiece_unittest are also built. When JIT support is enabled, another
552test program called pcre_jit_test is built.
553
554Both the scripts and all the program tests are run if you obey "make check" or
555"make test". For other systems, see the instructions in NON-UNIX-USE.
556
557The RunTest script runs the pcretest test program (which is documented in its
558own man page) on each of the relevant testinput files in the testdata
559directory, and compares the output with the contents of the corresponding
560testoutput files. Some tests are relevant only when certain build-time options
561were selected. For example, the tests for UTF-8 support are run only if
562--enable-utf8 was used. RunTest outputs a comment when it skips a test.
563
564Many of the tests that are not skipped are run up to three times. The second
565run forces pcre_study() to be called for all patterns except for a few in some
566tests that are marked "never study" (see the pcretest program for how this is
567done). If JIT support is available, the non-DFA tests are run a third time,
568this time with a forced pcre_study() with the PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE option.
569
570RunTest uses a file called testtry to hold the main output from pcretest
571(testsavedregex is also used as a working file). To run pcretest on just one of
572the test files, give its number as an argument to RunTest, for example:
573
574 RunTest 2
575
576The first test file can be fed directly into the perltest.pl script to check
577that Perl gives the same results. The only difference you should see is in the
578first few lines, where the Perl version is given instead of the PCRE version.
579
580The second set of tests check pcre_fullinfo(), pcre_info(), pcre_study(),
581pcre_copy_substring(), pcre_get_substring(), pcre_get_substring_list(), error
582detection, and run-time flags that are specific to PCRE, as well as the POSIX
583wrapper API. It also uses the debugging flags to check some of the internals of
584pcre_compile().
585
586If you build PCRE with a locale setting that is not the standard C locale, the
587character tables may be different (see next paragraph). In some cases, this may
588cause failures in the second set of tests. For example, in a locale where the
589isprint() function yields TRUE for characters in the range 128-255, the use of
590[:isascii:] inside a character class defines a different set of characters, and
591this shows up in this test as a difference in the compiled code, which is being
592listed for checking. Where the comparison test output contains [\x00-\x7f] the
593test will contain [\x00-\xff], and similarly in some other cases. This is not a
594bug in PCRE.
595
596The third set of tests checks pcre_maketables(), the facility for building a
597set of character tables for a specific locale and using them instead of the
598default tables. The tests make use of the "fr_FR" (French) locale. Before
599running the test, the script checks for the presence of this locale by running
600the "locale" command. If that command fails, or if it doesn't include "fr_FR"
601in the list of available locales, the third test cannot be run, and a comment
602is output to say why. If running this test produces instances of the error
603
604 ** Failed to set locale "fr_FR"
605
606in the comparison output, it means that locale is not available on your system,
607despite being listed by "locale". This does not mean that PCRE is broken.
608
609[If you are trying to run this test on Windows, you may be able to get it to
610work by changing "fr_FR" to "french" everywhere it occurs. Alternatively, use
611RunTest.bat. The version of RunTest.bat included with PCRE 7.4 and above uses
612Windows versions of test 2. More info on using RunTest.bat is included in the
613document entitled NON-UNIX-USE.]
614
615The fourth test checks the UTF-8 support. This file can be also fed directly to
616the perltest.pl script, provided you are running Perl 5.8 or higher.
617
618The fifth test checks error handling with UTF-8 encoding, and internal UTF-8
619features of PCRE that are not relevant to Perl.
620
621The sixth test (which is Perl-5.10 compatible) checks the support for Unicode
622character properties. This file can be also fed directly to the perltest.pl
623script, provided you are running Perl 5.10 or higher.
624
625The seventh, eighth, and ninth tests check the pcre_dfa_exec() alternative
626matching function, in non-UTF-8 mode, UTF-8 mode, and UTF-8 mode with Unicode
627property support, respectively.
628
629The tenth test checks some internal offsets and code size features; it is run
630only when the default "link size" of 2 is set (in other cases the sizes
631change) and when Unicode property support is enabled.
632
633The eleventh and twelfth tests check out features that are new in Perl 5.10,
634without and with UTF-8 support, respectively. This file can be also fed
635directly to the perltest.pl script, provided you are running Perl 5.10 or
636higher.
637
638The thirteenth test checks a number internals and non-Perl features concerned
639with Unicode property support.
640
641The fourteenth test is run only when JIT support is available, and the
642fifteenth test is run only when JIT support is not available. They test some
643JIT-specific features such as information output from pcretest about JIT
644compilation.
645
646
647Character tables
648----------------
649
650For speed, PCRE uses four tables for manipulating and identifying characters
651whose code point values are less than 256. The final argument of the
652pcre_compile() function is a pointer to a block of memory containing the
653concatenated tables. A call to pcre_maketables() can be used to generate a set
654of tables in the current locale. If the final argument for pcre_compile() is
655passed as NULL, a set of default tables that is built into the binary is used.
656
657The source file called pcre_chartables.c contains the default set of tables. By
658default, this is created as a copy of pcre_chartables.c.dist, which contains
659tables for ASCII coding. However, if --enable-rebuild-chartables is specified
660for ./configure, a different version of pcre_chartables.c is built by the
661program dftables (compiled from dftables.c), which uses the ANSI C character
662handling functions such as isalnum(), isalpha(), isupper(), islower(), etc. to
663build the table sources. This means that the default C locale which is set for
664your system will control the contents of these default tables. You can change
665the default tables by editing pcre_chartables.c and then re-building PCRE. If
666you do this, you should take care to ensure that the file does not get
667automatically re-generated. The best way to do this is to move
668pcre_chartables.c.dist out of the way and replace it with your customized
669tables.
670
671When the dftables program is run as a result of --enable-rebuild-chartables,
672it uses the default C locale that is set on your system. It does not pay
673attention to the LC_xxx environment variables. In other words, it uses the
674system's default locale rather than whatever the compiling user happens to have
675set. If you really do want to build a source set of character tables in a
676locale that is specified by the LC_xxx variables, you can run the dftables
677program by hand with the -L option. For example:
678
679 ./dftables -L pcre_chartables.c.special
680
681The first two 256-byte tables provide lower casing and case flipping functions,
682respectively. The next table consists of three 32-byte bit maps which identify
683digits, "word" characters, and white space, respectively. These are used when
684building 32-byte bit maps that represent character classes for code points less
685than 256.
686
687The final 256-byte table has bits indicating various character types, as
688follows:
689
690 1 white space character
691 2 letter
692 4 decimal digit
693 8 hexadecimal digit
694 16 alphanumeric or '_'
695 128 regular expression metacharacter or binary zero
696
697You should not alter the set of characters that contain the 128 bit, as that
698will cause PCRE to malfunction.
699
700
701File manifest
702-------------
703
704The distribution should contain the following files:
705
706(A) Source files of the PCRE library functions and their headers:
707
708 dftables.c auxiliary program for building pcre_chartables.c
709 when --enable-rebuild-chartables is specified
710
711 pcre_chartables.c.dist a default set of character tables that assume ASCII
712 coding; used, unless --enable-rebuild-chartables is
713 specified, by copying to pcre_chartables.c
714
715 pcreposix.c )
716 pcre_compile.c )
717 pcre_config.c )
718 pcre_dfa_exec.c )
719 pcre_exec.c )
720 pcre_fullinfo.c )
721 pcre_get.c ) sources for the functions in the library,
722 pcre_globals.c ) and some internal functions that they use
723 pcre_info.c )
724 pcre_jit_compile.c )
725 pcre_maketables.c )
726 pcre_newline.c )
727 pcre_ord2utf8.c )
728 pcre_refcount.c )
729 pcre_study.c )
730 pcre_tables.c )
731 pcre_try_flipped.c )
732 pcre_ucd.c )
733 pcre_valid_utf8.c )
734 pcre_version.c )
735 pcre_xclass.c )
736 pcre_printint.src ) debugging function that is #included in pcretest,
737 ) and can also be #included in pcre_compile()
738 pcre.h.in template for pcre.h when built by "configure"
739 pcreposix.h header for the external POSIX wrapper API
740 pcre_internal.h header for internal use
741 sljit/* 16 files that make up the JIT compiler
742 ucp.h header for Unicode property handling
743
744 config.h.in template for config.h, which is built by "configure"
745
746 pcrecpp.h public header file for the C++ wrapper
747 pcrecpparg.h.in template for another C++ header file
748 pcre_scanner.h public header file for C++ scanner functions
749 pcrecpp.cc )
750 pcre_scanner.cc ) source for the C++ wrapper library
751
752 pcre_stringpiece.h.in template for pcre_stringpiece.h, the header for the
753 C++ stringpiece functions
754 pcre_stringpiece.cc source for the C++ stringpiece functions
755
756(B) Source files for programs that use PCRE:
757
758 pcredemo.c simple demonstration of coding calls to PCRE
759 pcregrep.c source of a grep utility that uses PCRE
760 pcretest.c comprehensive test program
761
762(C) Auxiliary files:
763
764 132html script to turn "man" pages into HTML
765 AUTHORS information about the author of PCRE
766 ChangeLog log of changes to the code
767 CleanTxt script to clean nroff output for txt man pages
768 Detrail script to remove trailing spaces
769 HACKING some notes about the internals of PCRE
770 INSTALL generic installation instructions
771 LICENCE conditions for the use of PCRE
772 COPYING the same, using GNU's standard name
773 Makefile.in ) template for Unix Makefile, which is built by
774 ) "configure"
775 Makefile.am ) the automake input that was used to create
776 ) Makefile.in
777 NEWS important changes in this release
778 NON-UNIX-USE notes on building PCRE on non-Unix systems
779 PrepareRelease script to make preparations for "make dist"
780 README this file
781 RunTest a Unix shell script for running tests
782 RunGrepTest a Unix shell script for pcregrep tests
783 aclocal.m4 m4 macros (generated by "aclocal")
784 config.guess ) files used by libtool,
785 config.sub ) used only when building a shared library
786 configure a configuring shell script (built by autoconf)
787 configure.ac ) the autoconf input that was used to build
788 ) "configure" and config.h
789 depcomp ) script to find program dependencies, generated by
790 ) automake
791 doc/*.3 man page sources for PCRE
792 doc/*.1 man page sources for pcregrep and pcretest
793 doc/index.html.src the base HTML page
794 doc/html/* HTML documentation
795 doc/pcre.txt plain text version of the man pages
796 doc/pcretest.txt plain text documentation of test program
797 doc/perltest.txt plain text documentation of Perl test program
798 install-sh a shell script for installing files
799 libpcre.pc.in template for libpcre.pc for pkg-config
800 libpcreposix.pc.in template for libpcreposix.pc for pkg-config
801 libpcrecpp.pc.in template for libpcrecpp.pc for pkg-config
802 ltmain.sh file used to build a libtool script
803 missing ) common stub for a few missing GNU programs while
804 ) installing, generated by automake
805 mkinstalldirs script for making install directories
806 perltest.pl Perl test program
807 pcre-config.in source of script which retains PCRE information
808 pcre_jit_test.c test program for the JIT compiler
809 pcrecpp_unittest.cc )
810 pcre_scanner_unittest.cc ) test programs for the C++ wrapper
811 pcre_stringpiece_unittest.cc )
812 testdata/testinput* test data for main library tests
813 testdata/testoutput* expected test results
814 testdata/grep* input and output for pcregrep tests
815
816(D) Auxiliary files for cmake support
817
818 cmake/COPYING-CMAKE-SCRIPTS
819 cmake/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake
820 cmake/FindReadline.cmake
821 CMakeLists.txt
822 config-cmake.h.in
823
824(E) Auxiliary files for VPASCAL
825
826 makevp.bat
827 makevp_c.txt
828 makevp_l.txt
829 pcregexp.pas
830
831(F) Auxiliary files for building PCRE "by hand"
832
833 pcre.h.generic ) a version of the public PCRE header file
834 ) for use in non-"configure" environments
835 config.h.generic ) a version of config.h for use in non-"configure"
836 ) environments
837
838(F) Miscellaneous
839
840 RunTest.bat a script for running tests under Windows
841
842Philip Hazel
843Email local part: ph10
844Email domain: cam.ac.uk
845Last updated: 06 September 2011