PCRE specification

# 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