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PCRECPP(3)							    PCRECPP(3)

NAME
       PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions.

SYNOPSIS OF C++ WRAPPER

       #include <pcrecpp.h>

DESCRIPTION

       The  C++	 wrapper  for PCRE was provided by Google Inc. Some additional
       functionality was added by Giuseppe Maxia. This brief man page was con‐
       structed	 from  the  notes  in the pcrecpp.h file, which should be con‐
       sulted for further details.

MATCHING INTERFACE

       The "FullMatch" operation checks that supplied text matches a  supplied
       pattern	exactly.  If pointer arguments are supplied, it copies matched
       sub-strings that match sub-patterns into them.

	 Example: successful match
	    pcrecpp::RE re("h.*o");
	    re.FullMatch("hello");

	 Example: unsuccessful match (requires full match):
	    pcrecpp::RE re("e");
	    !re.FullMatch("hello");

	 Example: creating a temporary RE object:
	    pcrecpp::RE("h.*o").FullMatch("hello");

       You can pass in a "const char*" or a "string" for "text". The  examples
       below  tend to use a const char*. You can, as in the different examples
       above, store the RE object explicitly in a variable or use a  temporary
       RE  object.  The	 examples below use one mode or the other arbitrarily.
       Either could correctly be used for any of these examples.

       You must supply extra pointer arguments to extract matched subpieces.

	 Example: extracts "ruby" into "s" and 1234 into "i"
	    int i;
	    string s;
	    pcrecpp::RE re("(\\w+):(\\d+)");
	    re.FullMatch("ruby:1234", &s, &i);

	 Example: does not try to extract any extra sub-patterns
	    re.FullMatch("ruby:1234", &s);

	 Example: does not try to extract into NULL
	    re.FullMatch("ruby:1234", NULL, &i);

	 Example: integer overflow causes failure
	    !re.FullMatch("ruby:1234567891234", NULL, &i);

	 Example: fails because there aren't enough sub-patterns:
	    !pcrecpp::RE("\\w+:\\d+").FullMatch("ruby:1234", &s);

	 Example: fails because string cannot be stored in integer
	    !pcrecpp::RE("(.*)").FullMatch("ruby", &i);

       The provided pointer arguments can be pointers to  any  scalar  numeric
       type, or one of:

	  string	(matched piece is copied to string)
	  StringPiece	(StringPiece is mutated to point to matched piece)
	  T		(where "bool T::ParseFrom(const char*, int)" exists)
	  NULL		(the corresponding matched sub-pattern is not copied)

       The  function returns true iff all of the following conditions are sat‐
       isfied:

	 a. "text" matches "pattern" exactly;

	 b. The number of matched sub-patterns is >= number of supplied
	    pointers;

	 c. The "i"th argument has a suitable type for holding the
	    string captured as the "i"th sub-pattern. If you pass in
	    void * NULL for the "i"th argument, or a non-void * NULL
	    of the correct type, or pass fewer arguments than the
	    number of sub-patterns, "i"th captured sub-pattern is
	    ignored.

       CAVEAT: An optional sub-pattern that does  not  exist  in  the  matched
       string  is  assigned  the  empty	 string. Therefore, the following will
       return false (because the empty string is not a valid number):

	  int number;
	  pcrecpp::RE::FullMatch("abc", "[a-z]+(\\d+)?", &number);

       The matching interface supports at most 16 arguments per call.  If  you
       need    more,	consider    using    the    more   general   interface
       pcrecpp::RE::DoMatch. See pcrecpp.h for the signature for DoMatch.

       NOTE: Do not use no_arg, which is used internally to mark the end of  a
       list  of optional arguments, as a placeholder for missing arguments, as
       this can lead to segfaults.

QUOTING METACHARACTERS

       You can use the "QuoteMeta" operation to insert backslashes before  all
       potentially  meaningful	characters  in	a string. The returned string,
       used as a regular expression, will exactly match the original string.

	 Example:
	    string quoted = RE::QuoteMeta(unquoted);

       Note that it's legal to escape a character even if it  has  no  special
       meaning	in  a  regular expression -- so this function does that. (This
       also makes it identical to the perl function  of	 the  same  name;  see
       "perldoc	   -f	 quotemeta".)	 For   example,	  "1.5-2.0?"   becomes
       "1\.5\-2\.0\?".

PARTIAL MATCHES

       You can use the "PartialMatch" operation when you want the  pattern  to
       match any substring of the text.

	 Example: simple search for a string:
	    pcrecpp::RE("ell").PartialMatch("hello");

	 Example: find first number in a string:
	    int number;
	    pcrecpp::RE re("(\\d+)");
	    re.PartialMatch("x*100 + 20", &number);
	    assert(number == 100);

UTF-8 AND THE MATCHING INTERFACE

       By  default,  pattern  and text are plain text, one byte per character.
       The UTF8 flag, passed to	 the  constructor,  causes  both  pattern  and
       string to be treated as UTF-8 text, still a byte stream but potentially
       multiple bytes per character. In practice, the text is likelier	to  be
       UTF-8  than  the pattern, but the match returned may depend on the UTF8
       flag, so always use it when matching UTF8 text. For example,  "."  will
       match  one  byte normally but with UTF8 set may match up to three bytes
       of a multi-byte character.

	 Example:
	    pcrecpp::RE_Options options;
	    options.set_utf8();
	    pcrecpp::RE re(utf8_pattern, options);
	    re.FullMatch(utf8_string);

	 Example: using the convenience function UTF8():
	    pcrecpp::RE re(utf8_pattern, pcrecpp::UTF8());
	    re.FullMatch(utf8_string);

       NOTE: The UTF8 flag is ignored if pcre was not configured with the
	     --enable-utf8 flag.

PASSING MODIFIERS TO THE REGULAR EXPRESSION ENGINE

       PCRE defines some modifiers to  change  the  behavior  of  the  regular
       expression   engine.  The  C++  wrapper	defines	 an  auxiliary	class,
       RE_Options, as a vehicle to pass such modifiers to  a  RE  class.  Cur‐
       rently, the following modifiers are supported:

	  modifier		description		  Perl corresponding

	  PCRE_CASELESS		case insensitive match	    /i
	  PCRE_MULTILINE	multiple lines match	    /m
	  PCRE_DOTALL		dot matches newlines	    /s
	  PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY	$ matches only at end	    N/A
	  PCRE_EXTRA		strict escape parsing	    N/A
	  PCRE_EXTENDED		ignore whitespaces	    /x
	  PCRE_UTF8		handles UTF8 chars	    built-in
	  PCRE_UNGREEDY		reverses * and *?	    N/A
	  PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE	disables capturing parens   N/A (*)

       (*)  Both Perl and PCRE allow non capturing parentheses by means of the
       "?:" modifier within the pattern itself. e.g. (?:ab|cd) does  not  cap‐
       ture, while (ab|cd) does.

       For  a  full  account on how each modifier works, please check the PCRE
       API reference page.

       For each modifier, there are two member functions whose	name  is  made
       out  of	the  modifier  in  lowercase,  without the "PCRE_" prefix. For
       instance, PCRE_CASELESS is handled by

	 bool caseless()

       which returns true if the modifier is set, and

	 RE_Options & set_caseless(bool)

       which sets or unsets the modifier. Moreover, PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT can
       be  accessed  through  the  set_match_limit()  and match_limit() member
       functions. Setting match_limit to a non-zero value will limit the  exe‐
       cution  of pcre to keep it from doing bad things like blowing the stack
       or taking an eternity to return a result.  A  value  of	5000  is  good
       enough  to stop stack blowup in a 2MB thread stack. Setting match_limit
       to  zero	 disables  match  limiting.  Alternatively,   you   can	  call
       match_limit_recursion()	which uses PCRE_EXTRA_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION to
       limit how much  PCRE  recurses.	match_limit()  limits  the  number  of
       matches PCRE does; match_limit_recursion() limits the depth of internal
       recursion, and therefore the amount of stack that is used.

       Normally, to pass one or more modifiers to a RE class,  you  declare  a
       RE_Options object, set the appropriate options, and pass this object to
       a RE constructor. Example:

	  RE_options opt;
	  opt.set_caseless(true);
	  if (RE("HELLO", opt).PartialMatch("hello world")) ...

       RE_options has two constructors. The default constructor takes no argu‐
       ments  and creates a set of flags that are off by default. The optional
       parameter option_flags is to facilitate transfer of legacy code from  C
       programs.  This lets you do

	  RE(pattern,
	    RE_Options(PCRE_CASELESS|PCRE_MULTILINE)).PartialMatch(str);

       However, new code is better off doing

	  RE(pattern,
	    RE_Options().set_caseless(true).set_multiline(true))
	      .PartialMatch(str);

       If you are going to pass one of the most used modifiers, there are some
       convenience functions that return a RE_Options class with the appropri‐
       ate  modifier  already  set: CASELESS(), UTF8(), MULTILINE(), DOTALL(),
       and EXTENDED().

       If you need to set several options at once, and you don't  want	to  go
       through	the pains of declaring a RE_Options object and setting several
       options, there is a parallel method that give you such ability  on  the
       fly.  You  can  concatenate several set_xxxxx() member functions, since
       each of them returns a reference to its class object. For  example,  to
       pass  PCRE_CASELESS, PCRE_EXTENDED, and PCRE_MULTILINE to a RE with one
       statement, you may write:

	  RE(" ^ xyz \\s+ .* blah$",
	    RE_Options()
	      .set_caseless(true)
	      .set_extended(true)
	      .set_multiline(true)).PartialMatch(sometext);

SCANNING TEXT INCREMENTALLY

       The "Consume" operation may be useful if you want to  repeatedly	 match
       regular expressions at the front of a string and skip over them as they
       match. This requires use of the "StringPiece" type, which represents  a
       sub-range  of  a	 real  string.	Like RE, StringPiece is defined in the
       pcrecpp namespace.

	 Example: read lines of the form "var = value" from a string.
	    string contents = ...;		   // Fill string somehow
	    pcrecpp::StringPiece input(contents);  // Wrap in a StringPiece

	    string var;
	    int value;
	    pcrecpp::RE re("(\\w+) = (\\d+)\n");
	    while (re.Consume(&input, &var, &value)) {
	      ...;
	    }

       Each successful call  to	 "Consume"  will  set  "var/value",  and  also
       advance "input" so it points past the matched text.

       The  "FindAndConsume"  operation	 is  similar to "Consume" but does not
       anchor your match at the beginning of  the  string.  For	 example,  you
       could extract all words from a string by repeatedly calling

	 pcrecpp::RE("(\\w+)").FindAndConsume(&input, &word)

PARSING HEX/OCTAL/C-RADIX NUMBERS

       By default, if you pass a pointer to a numeric value, the corresponding
       text is interpreted as a base-10	 number.  You  can  instead  wrap  the
       pointer with a call to one of the operators Hex(), Octal(), or CRadix()
       to interpret the text in another base. The CRadix  operator  interprets
       C-style	"0"  (base-8)  and  "0x"  (base-16)  prefixes, but defaults to
       base-10.

	 Example:
	   int a, b, c, d;
	   pcrecpp::RE re("(.*) (.*) (.*) (.*)");
	   re.FullMatch("100 40 0100 0x40",
			pcrecpp::Octal(&a), pcrecpp::Hex(&b),
			pcrecpp::CRadix(&c), pcrecpp::CRadix(&d));

       will leave 64 in a, b, c, and d.

REPLACING PARTS OF STRINGS

       You can replace the first match of "pattern" in "str"  with  "rewrite".
       Within  "rewrite",  backslash-escaped  digits (\1 to \9) can be used to
       insert text matching corresponding parenthesized group  from  the  pat‐
       tern. \0 in "rewrite" refers to the entire matching text. For example:

	 string s = "yabba dabba doo";
	 pcrecpp::RE("b+").Replace("d", &s);

       will  leave  "s" containing "yada dabba doo". The result is true if the
       pattern matches and a replacement occurs, false otherwise.

       GlobalReplace is like Replace except that it replaces  all  occurrences
       of  the	pattern	 in  the string with the rewrite. Replacements are not
       subject to re-matching. For example:

	 string s = "yabba dabba doo";
	 pcrecpp::RE("b+").GlobalReplace("d", &s);

       will leave "s" containing "yada dada doo". It  returns  the  number  of
       replacements made.

       Extract	is like Replace, except that if the pattern matches, "rewrite"
       is copied into "out" (an additional argument) with substitutions.   The
       non-matching  portions  of "text" are ignored. Returns true iff a match
       occurred and the extraction happened successfully;  if no match occurs,
       the string is left unaffected.

AUTHOR

       The C++ wrapper was contributed by Google Inc.
       Copyright (c) 2007 Google Inc.

REVISION

       Last updated: 17 March 2009

								    PCRECPP(3)
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