/usr/man2/cat.3/pcre_compile.3.Z

NAME

       PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions

SYNOPSIS

       #include <pcre.h>

       pcre *pcre_compile(const char *pattern, int options,
            const char **errptr, int *erroffset,
            const unsigned char *tableptr);

DESCRIPTION

       This  function compiles a regular expression into an internal form. Its
       arguments are:

         pattern       A zero-terminated string containing the
                         regular expression to be compiled
         options       Zero or more option bits
         errptr        Where to put an error message
         erroffset     Offset in pattern where error was found
         tableptr      Pointer to character tables, or NULL to
                         use the built-in default

       The option bits are:

         PCRE_ANCHORED         Force pattern anchoring
         PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT     Compile automatic callouts
         PCRE_CASELESS         Do caseless matching
         PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY   $ not to match newline at end
         PCRE_DOTALL           . matches anything including NL
         PCRE_EXTENDED         Ignore whitespace and # comments
         PCRE_EXTRA            PCRE extra features
                                 (not much use currently)
         PCRE_FIRSTLINE        Force matching to be before newline
         PCRE_MULTILINE        ^ and $ match newlines within data
         PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE  Disable numbered capturing paren-
                                 theses (named ones available)
         PCRE_UNGREEDY         Invert greediness of quantifiers
         PCRE_UTF8             Run in UTF-8 mode
         PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK    Do not check the pattern for UTF-8
                                 validity (only relevant if
                                 PCRE_UTF8 is set)

       PCRE must be built with UTF-8 support in order  to  use  PCRE_UTF8  and
       PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK.

       The yield of the function is a pointer to a private data structure that
       contains the compiled pattern, or NULL if an error was detected.

       There is a complete description of the PCRE native API in  the  pcreapi
       page and a description of the POSIX API in the pcreposix page.

                                                               PCRE_COMPILE(3)