doc/html/pcre.html

<html>
<head>
<title>pcre specification</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#00005A" link="#0066FF" alink="#3399FF" vlink="#2222BB">
<h1>pcre man page</h1>
<p>
Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
</p>
<p>
This page is part of the PCRE HTML documentation. It was generated automatically
from the original man page. If there is any nonsense in it, please consult the
man page, in case the conversion went wrong.
<br>
<ul>
<li><a name="TOC1" href="#SEC1">INTRODUCTION</a>
<li><a name="TOC2" href="#SEC2">USER DOCUMENTATION</a>
<li><a name="TOC3" href="#SEC3">LIMITATIONS</a>
<li><a name="TOC4" href="#SEC4">UTF-8 AND UNICODE PROPERTY SUPPORT</a>
<li><a name="TOC5" href="#SEC5">AUTHOR</a>
<li><a name="TOC6" href="#SEC6">REVISION</a>
</ul>
<br><a name="SEC1" href="#TOC1">INTRODUCTION</a><br>
<P>
The PCRE library is a set of functions that implement regular expression
pattern matching using the same syntax and semantics as Perl, with just a few
differences. Certain features that appeared in Python and PCRE before they
appeared in Perl are also available using the Python syntax. There is also some
support for certain .NET and Oniguruma syntax items, and there is an option for
requesting some minor changes that give better JavaScript compatibility.
</P>
<P>
The current implementation of PCRE (release 8.xx) corresponds approximately
with Perl 5.10, including support for UTF-8 encoded strings and Unicode general
category properties. However, UTF-8 and Unicode support has to be explicitly
enabled; it is not the default. The Unicode tables correspond to Unicode
release 5.1.
</P>
<P>
In addition to the Perl-compatible matching function, PCRE contains an
alternative matching function that matches the same compiled patterns in a
different way. In certain circumstances, the alternative function has some
advantages. For a discussion of the two matching algorithms, see the
<a href="pcrematching.html"><b>pcrematching</b></a>
page.
</P>
<P>
PCRE is written in C and released as a C library. A number of people have
written wrappers and interfaces of various kinds. In particular, Google Inc.
have provided a comprehensive C++ wrapper. This is now included as part of the
PCRE distribution. The
<a href="pcrecpp.html"><b>pcrecpp</b></a>
page has details of this interface. Other people's contributions can be found
in the <i>Contrib</i> directory at the primary FTP site, which is:
<a href="ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre">ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre</a>
</P>
<P>
Details of exactly which Perl regular expression features are and are not
supported by PCRE are given in separate documents. See the
<a href="pcrepattern.html"><b>pcrepattern</b></a>
and
<a href="pcrecompat.html"><b>pcrecompat</b></a>
pages. There is a syntax summary in the
<a href="pcresyntax.html"><b>pcresyntax</b></a>
page.
</P>
<P>
Some features of PCRE can be included, excluded, or changed when the library is
built. The
<a href="pcre_config.html"><b>pcre_config()</b></a>
function makes it possible for a client to discover which features are
available. The features themselves are described in the
<a href="pcrebuild.html"><b>pcrebuild</b></a>
page. Documentation about building PCRE for various operating systems can be
found in the <b>README</b> file in the source distribution.
</P>
<P>
The library contains a number of undocumented internal functions and data
tables that are used by more than one of the exported external functions, but
which are not intended for use by external callers. Their names all begin with
"_pcre_", which hopefully will not provoke any name clashes. In some
environments, it is possible to control which external symbols are exported
when a shared library is built, and in these cases the undocumented symbols are
not exported.
</P>
<br><a name="SEC2" href="#TOC1">USER DOCUMENTATION</a><br>
<P>
The user documentation for PCRE comprises a number of different sections. In
the "man" format, each of these is a separate "man page". In the HTML format,
each is a separate page, linked from the index page. In the plain text format,
all the sections, except the <b>pcredemo</b> section, are concatenated, for ease
of searching. The sections are as follows:
<pre>
  pcre              this document
  pcre-config       show PCRE installation configuration information
  pcreapi           details of PCRE's native C API
  pcrebuild         options for building PCRE
  pcrecallout       details of the callout feature
  pcrecompat        discussion of Perl compatibility
  pcrecpp           details of the C++ wrapper
  pcredemo          a demonstration C program that uses PCRE
  pcregrep          description of the <b>pcregrep</b> command
  pcrematching      discussion of the two matching algorithms
  pcrepartial       details of the partial matching facility
  pcrepattern       syntax and semantics of supported regular expressions
  pcresyntax        quick syntax reference
  pcreperform       discussion of performance issues
  pcreposix         the POSIX-compatible C API
  pcreprecompile    details of saving and re-using precompiled patterns
  pcresample        discussion of the pcredemo program
  pcrestack         discussion of stack usage
  pcretest          description of the <b>pcretest</b> testing command
</pre>
In addition, in the "man" and HTML formats, there is a short page for each
C library function, listing its arguments and results.
</P>
<br><a name="SEC3" href="#TOC1">LIMITATIONS</a><br>
<P>
There are some size limitations in PCRE but it is hoped that they will never in
practice be relevant.
</P>
<P>
The maximum length of a compiled pattern is 65539 (sic) bytes if PCRE is
compiled with the default internal linkage size of 2. If you want to process
regular expressions that are truly enormous, you can compile PCRE with an
internal linkage size of 3 or 4 (see the <b>README</b> file in the source
distribution and the
<a href="pcrebuild.html"><b>pcrebuild</b></a>
documentation for details). In these cases the limit is substantially larger.
However, the speed of execution is slower.
</P>
<P>
All values in repeating quantifiers must be less than 65536.
</P>
<P>
There is no limit to the number of parenthesized subpatterns, but there can be
no more than 65535 capturing subpatterns.
</P>
<P>
The maximum length of name for a named subpattern is 32 characters, and the
maximum number of named subpatterns is 10000.
</P>
<P>
The maximum length of a subject string is the largest positive number that an
integer variable can hold. However, when using the traditional matching
function, PCRE uses recursion to handle subpatterns and indefinite repetition.
This means that the available stack space may limit the size of a subject
string that can be processed by certain patterns. For a discussion of stack
issues, see the
<a href="pcrestack.html"><b>pcrestack</b></a>
documentation.
<a name="utf8support"></a></P>
<br><a name="SEC4" href="#TOC1">UTF-8 AND UNICODE PROPERTY SUPPORT</a><br>
<P>
From release 3.3, PCRE has had some support for character strings encoded in
the UTF-8 format. For release 4.0 this was greatly extended to cover most
common requirements, and in release 5.0 additional support for Unicode general
category properties was added.
</P>
<P>
In order process UTF-8 strings, you must build PCRE to include UTF-8 support in
the code, and, in addition, you must call
<a href="pcre_compile.html"><b>pcre_compile()</b></a>
with the PCRE_UTF8 option flag, or the pattern must start with the sequence
(*UTF8). When either of these is the case, both the pattern and any subject
strings that are matched against it are treated as UTF-8 strings instead of
just strings of bytes.
</P>
<P>
If you compile PCRE with UTF-8 support, but do not use it at run time, the
library will be a bit bigger, but the additional run time overhead is limited
to testing the PCRE_UTF8 flag occasionally, so should not be very big.
</P>
<P>
If PCRE is built with Unicode character property support (which implies UTF-8
support), the escape sequences \p{..}, \P{..}, and \X are supported.
The available properties that can be tested are limited to the general
category properties such as Lu for an upper case letter or Nd for a decimal
number, the Unicode script names such as Arabic or Han, and the derived
properties Any and L&. A full list is given in the
<a href="pcrepattern.html"><b>pcrepattern</b></a>
documentation. Only the short names for properties are supported. For example,
\p{L} matches a letter. Its Perl synonym, \p{Letter}, is not supported.
Furthermore, in Perl, many properties may optionally be prefixed by "Is", for
compatibility with Perl 5.6. PCRE does not support this.
<a name="utf8strings"></a></P>
<br><b>
Validity of UTF-8 strings
</b><br>
<P>
When you set the PCRE_UTF8 flag, the strings passed as patterns and subjects
are (by default) checked for validity on entry to the relevant functions. From
release 7.3 of PCRE, the check is according the rules of RFC 3629, which are
themselves derived from the Unicode specification. Earlier releases of PCRE
followed the rules of RFC 2279, which allows the full range of 31-bit values (0
to 0x7FFFFFFF). The current check allows only values in the range U+0 to
U+10FFFF, excluding U+D800 to U+DFFF.
</P>
<P>
The excluded code points are the "Low Surrogate Area" of Unicode, of which the
Unicode Standard says this: "The Low Surrogate Area does not contain any
character assignments, consequently no character code charts or namelists are
provided for this area. Surrogates are reserved for use with UTF-16 and then
must be used in pairs." The code points that are encoded by UTF-16 pairs are
available as independent code points in the UTF-8 encoding. (In other words,
the whole surrogate thing is a fudge for UTF-16 which unfortunately messes up
UTF-8.)
</P>
<P>
If an invalid UTF-8 string is passed to PCRE, an error return
(PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8) is given. In some situations, you may already know that
your strings are valid, and therefore want to skip these checks in order to
improve performance. If you set the PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK flag at compile time or
at run time, PCRE assumes that the pattern or subject it is given
(respectively) contains only valid UTF-8 codes. In this case, it does not
diagnose an invalid UTF-8 string.
</P>
<P>
If you pass an invalid UTF-8 string when PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK is set, what
happens depends on why the string is invalid. If the string conforms to the
"old" definition of UTF-8 (RFC 2279), it is processed as a string of characters
in the range 0 to 0x7FFFFFFF. In other words, apart from the initial validity
test, PCRE (when in UTF-8 mode) handles strings according to the more liberal
rules of RFC 2279. However, if the string does not even conform to RFC 2279,
the result is undefined. Your program may crash.
</P>
<P>
If you want to process strings of values in the full range 0 to 0x7FFFFFFF,
encoded in a UTF-8-like manner as per the old RFC, you can set
PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK to bypass the more restrictive test. However, in this
situation, you will have to apply your own validity check.
</P>
<br><b>
General comments about UTF-8 mode
</b><br>
<P>
1. An unbraced hexadecimal escape sequence (such as \xb3) matches a two-byte
UTF-8 character if the value is greater than 127.
</P>
<P>
2. Octal numbers up to \777 are recognized, and match two-byte UTF-8
characters for values greater than \177.
</P>
<P>
3. Repeat quantifiers apply to complete UTF-8 characters, not to individual
bytes, for example: \x{100}{3}.
</P>
<P>
4. The dot metacharacter matches one UTF-8 character instead of a single byte.
</P>
<P>
5. The escape sequence \C can be used to match a single byte in UTF-8 mode,
but its use can lead to some strange effects. This facility is not available in
the alternative matching function, <b>pcre_dfa_exec()</b>.
</P>
<P>
6. The character escapes \b, \B, \d, \D, \s, \S, \w, and \W correctly
test characters of any code value, but the characters that PCRE recognizes as
digits, spaces, or word characters remain the same set as before, all with
values less than 256. This remains true even when PCRE includes Unicode
property support, because to do otherwise would slow down PCRE in many common
cases. If you really want to test for a wider sense of, say, "digit", you
must use Unicode property tests such as \p{Nd}. Note that this also applies to
\b, because it is defined in terms of \w and \W.
</P>
<P>
7. Similarly, characters that match the POSIX named character classes are all
low-valued characters.
</P>
<P>
8. However, the Perl 5.10 horizontal and vertical whitespace matching escapes
(\h, \H, \v, and \V) do match all the appropriate Unicode characters.
</P>
<P>
9. Case-insensitive matching applies only to characters whose values are less
than 128, unless PCRE is built with Unicode property support. Even when Unicode
property support is available, PCRE still uses its own character tables when
checking the case of low-valued characters, so as not to degrade performance.
The Unicode property information is used only for characters with higher
values. Even when Unicode property support is available, PCRE supports
case-insensitive matching only when there is a one-to-one mapping between a
letter's cases. There are a small number of many-to-one mappings in Unicode;
these are not supported by PCRE.
</P>
<br><a name="SEC5" href="#TOC1">AUTHOR</a><br>
<P>
Philip Hazel
<br>
University Computing Service
<br>
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
<br>
</P>
<P>
Putting an actual email address here seems to have been a spam magnet, so I've
taken it away. If you want to email me, use my two initials, followed by the
two digits 10, at the domain cam.ac.uk.
</P>
<br><a name="SEC6" href="#TOC1">REVISION</a><br>
<P>
Last updated: 01 September 2009
<br>
Copyright &copy; 1997-2009 University of Cambridge.
<br>
<p>
Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
</p>
1	nigel	63	<html>
2			<head>
3			<title>pcre specification</title>
4			</head>
5			<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#00005A" link="#0066FF" alink="#3399FF" vlink="#2222BB">
6	nigel	75	<h1>pcre man page</h1>
7			<p>
8			Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
9			</p>
10	ph10	111	<p>
11	nigel	75	This page is part of the PCRE HTML documentation. It was generated automatically
12			from the original man page. If there is any nonsense in it, please consult the
13			man page, in case the conversion went wrong.
14	ph10	111	<br>
15	nigel	63	<ul>
16	nigel	75	<li><a name="TOC1" href="#SEC1">INTRODUCTION</a>
17	nigel	63	<li><a name="TOC2" href="#SEC2">USER DOCUMENTATION</a>
18			<li><a name="TOC3" href="#SEC3">LIMITATIONS</a>
19	nigel	75	<li><a name="TOC4" href="#SEC4">UTF-8 AND UNICODE PROPERTY SUPPORT</a>
20	nigel	63	<li><a name="TOC5" href="#SEC5">AUTHOR</a>
21	ph10	99	<li><a name="TOC6" href="#SEC6">REVISION</a>
22	nigel	63	</ul>
23	nigel	75	<br><a name="SEC1" href="#TOC1">INTRODUCTION</a><br>
24	nigel	63	<P>
25			The PCRE library is a set of functions that implement regular expression
26			pattern matching using the same syntax and semantics as Perl, with just a few
27	ph10	345	differences. Certain features that appeared in Python and PCRE before they
28			appeared in Perl are also available using the Python syntax. There is also some
29			support for certain .NET and Oniguruma syntax items, and there is an option for
30			requesting some minor changes that give better JavaScript compatibility.
31	nigel	63	</P>
32			<P>
33	ph10	429	The current implementation of PCRE (release 8.xx) corresponds approximately
34			with Perl 5.10, including support for UTF-8 encoded strings and Unicode general
35	nigel	93	category properties. However, UTF-8 and Unicode support has to be explicitly
36			enabled; it is not the default. The Unicode tables correspond to Unicode
37	ph10	416	release 5.1.
38	nigel	93	</P>
39			<P>
40			In addition to the Perl-compatible matching function, PCRE contains an
41	nigel	77	alternative matching function that matches the same compiled patterns in a
42			different way. In certain circumstances, the alternative function has some
43			advantages. For a discussion of the two matching algorithms, see the
44			<a href="pcrematching.html"><b>pcrematching</b></a>
45			page.
46			</P>
47			<P>
48	nigel	75	PCRE is written in C and released as a C library. A number of people have
49	nigel	77	written wrappers and interfaces of various kinds. In particular, Google Inc.
50			have provided a comprehensive C++ wrapper. This is now included as part of the
51			PCRE distribution. The
52			<a href="pcrecpp.html"><b>pcrecpp</b></a>
53			page has details of this interface. Other people's contributions can be found
54			in the <i>Contrib</i> directory at the primary FTP site, which is:
55	nigel	75	<a href="ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre">ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre</a>
56	nigel	63	</P>
57			<P>
58			Details of exactly which Perl regular expression features are and are not
59			supported by PCRE are given in separate documents. See the
60			<a href="pcrepattern.html"><b>pcrepattern</b></a>
61			and
62			<a href="pcrecompat.html"><b>pcrecompat</b></a>
63	ph10	208	pages. There is a syntax summary in the
64			<a href="pcresyntax.html"><b>pcresyntax</b></a>
65			page.
66	nigel	63	</P>
67			<P>
68			Some features of PCRE can be included, excluded, or changed when the library is
69			built. The
70			<a href="pcre_config.html"><b>pcre_config()</b></a>
71			function makes it possible for a client to discover which features are
72	nigel	75	available. The features themselves are described in the
73			<a href="pcrebuild.html"><b>pcrebuild</b></a>
74			page. Documentation about building PCRE for various operating systems can be
75			found in the <b>README</b> file in the source distribution.
76	nigel	63	</P>
77	nigel	77	<P>
78			The library contains a number of undocumented internal functions and data
79			tables that are used by more than one of the exported external functions, but
80			which are not intended for use by external callers. Their names all begin with
81	nigel	83	"_pcre_", which hopefully will not provoke any name clashes. In some
82			environments, it is possible to control which external symbols are exported
83			when a shared library is built, and in these cases the undocumented symbols are
84			not exported.
85	nigel	77	</P>
86	nigel	63	<br><a name="SEC2" href="#TOC1">USER DOCUMENTATION</a><br>
87			<P>
88	nigel	75	The user documentation for PCRE comprises a number of different sections. In
89			the "man" format, each of these is a separate "man page". In the HTML format,
90			each is a separate page, linked from the index page. In the plain text format,
91	ph10	429	all the sections, except the <b>pcredemo</b> section, are concatenated, for ease
92			of searching. The sections are as follows:
93	nigel	63	<pre>
94			pcre this document
95	ph10	153	pcre-config show PCRE installation configuration information
96	nigel	77	pcreapi details of PCRE's native C API
97	nigel	63	pcrebuild options for building PCRE
98			pcrecallout details of the callout feature
99			pcrecompat discussion of Perl compatibility
100	nigel	77	pcrecpp details of the C++ wrapper
101	ph10	429	pcredemo a demonstration C program that uses PCRE
102	nigel	63	pcregrep description of the <b>pcregrep</b> command
103	nigel	77	pcrematching discussion of the two matching algorithms
104	nigel	75	pcrepartial details of the partial matching facility
105			pcrepattern syntax and semantics of supported regular expressions
106	ph10	208	pcresyntax quick syntax reference
107	nigel	63	pcreperform discussion of performance issues
108	nigel	77	pcreposix the POSIX-compatible C API
109	nigel	75	pcreprecompile details of saving and re-using precompiled patterns
110	ph10	429	pcresample discussion of the pcredemo program
111	nigel	91	pcrestack discussion of stack usage
112	nigel	75	pcretest description of the <b>pcretest</b> testing command
113			</pre>
114	nigel	63	In addition, in the "man" and HTML formats, there is a short page for each
115	nigel	77	C library function, listing its arguments and results.
116	nigel	63	</P>
117			<br><a name="SEC3" href="#TOC1">LIMITATIONS</a><br>
118			<P>
119			There are some size limitations in PCRE but it is hoped that they will never in
120			practice be relevant.
121			</P>
122			<P>
123			The maximum length of a compiled pattern is 65539 (sic) bytes if PCRE is
124			compiled with the default internal linkage size of 2. If you want to process
125			regular expressions that are truly enormous, you can compile PCRE with an
126			internal linkage size of 3 or 4 (see the <b>README</b> file in the source
127			distribution and the
128			<a href="pcrebuild.html"><b>pcrebuild</b></a>
129	nigel	75	documentation for details). In these cases the limit is substantially larger.
130	nigel	93	However, the speed of execution is slower.
131	nigel	63	</P>
132			<P>
133	ph10	208	All values in repeating quantifiers must be less than 65536.
134	nigel	63	</P>
135			<P>
136	nigel	93	There is no limit to the number of parenthesized subpatterns, but there can be
137			no more than 65535 capturing subpatterns.
138	nigel	63	</P>
139			<P>
140	nigel	93	The maximum length of name for a named subpattern is 32 characters, and the
141			maximum number of named subpatterns is 10000.
142	nigel	91	</P>
143			<P>
144	nigel	63	The maximum length of a subject string is the largest positive number that an
145	nigel	77	integer variable can hold. However, when using the traditional matching
146			function, PCRE uses recursion to handle subpatterns and indefinite repetition.
147			This means that the available stack space may limit the size of a subject
148	nigel	91	string that can be processed by certain patterns. For a discussion of stack
149			issues, see the
150			<a href="pcrestack.html"><b>pcrestack</b></a>
151			documentation.
152	nigel	75	<a name="utf8support"></a></P>
153			<br><a name="SEC4" href="#TOC1">UTF-8 AND UNICODE PROPERTY SUPPORT</a><br>
154	nigel	63	<P>
155	nigel	75	From release 3.3, PCRE has had some support for character strings encoded in
156			the UTF-8 format. For release 4.0 this was greatly extended to cover most
157			common requirements, and in release 5.0 additional support for Unicode general
158			category properties was added.
159	nigel	63	</P>
160			<P>
161			In order process UTF-8 strings, you must build PCRE to include UTF-8 support in
162			the code, and, in addition, you must call
163			<a href="pcre_compile.html"><b>pcre_compile()</b></a>
164	ph10	416	with the PCRE_UTF8 option flag, or the pattern must start with the sequence
165			(*UTF8). When either of these is the case, both the pattern and any subject
166			strings that are matched against it are treated as UTF-8 strings instead of
167			just strings of bytes.
168	nigel	63	</P>
169			<P>
170			If you compile PCRE with UTF-8 support, but do not use it at run time, the
171			library will be a bit bigger, but the additional run time overhead is limited
172	nigel	93	to testing the PCRE_UTF8 flag occasionally, so should not be very big.
173	nigel	63	</P>
174			<P>
175	nigel	75	If PCRE is built with Unicode character property support (which implies UTF-8
176			support), the escape sequences \p{..}, \P{..}, and \X are supported.
177			The available properties that can be tested are limited to the general
178			category properties such as Lu for an upper case letter or Nd for a decimal
179	nigel	87	number, the Unicode script names such as Arabic or Han, and the derived
180			properties Any and L&. A full list is given in the
181	nigel	75	<a href="pcrepattern.html"><b>pcrepattern</b></a>
182	nigel	87	documentation. Only the short names for properties are supported. For example,
183			\p{L} matches a letter. Its Perl synonym, \p{Letter}, is not supported.
184			Furthermore, in Perl, many properties may optionally be prefixed by "Is", for
185			compatibility with Perl 5.6. PCRE does not support this.
186	ph10	211	<a name="utf8strings"></a></P>
187			<br><b>
188			Validity of UTF-8 strings
189			</b><br>
190			<P>
191			When you set the PCRE_UTF8 flag, the strings passed as patterns and subjects
192			are (by default) checked for validity on entry to the relevant functions. From
193			release 7.3 of PCRE, the check is according the rules of RFC 3629, which are
194			themselves derived from the Unicode specification. Earlier releases of PCRE
195			followed the rules of RFC 2279, which allows the full range of 31-bit values (0
196			to 0x7FFFFFFF). The current check allows only values in the range U+0 to
197			U+10FFFF, excluding U+D800 to U+DFFF.
198	nigel	75	</P>
199			<P>
200	ph10	211	The excluded code points are the "Low Surrogate Area" of Unicode, of which the
201			Unicode Standard says this: "The Low Surrogate Area does not contain any
202			character assignments, consequently no character code charts or namelists are
203			provided for this area. Surrogates are reserved for use with UTF-16 and then
204			must be used in pairs." The code points that are encoded by UTF-16 pairs are
205			available as independent code points in the UTF-8 encoding. (In other words,
206			the whole surrogate thing is a fudge for UTF-16 which unfortunately messes up
207			UTF-8.)
208	nigel	63	</P>
209			<P>
210	ph10	211	If an invalid UTF-8 string is passed to PCRE, an error return
211			(PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8) is given. In some situations, you may already know that
212			your strings are valid, and therefore want to skip these checks in order to
213			improve performance. If you set the PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK flag at compile time or
214			at run time, PCRE assumes that the pattern or subject it is given
215			(respectively) contains only valid UTF-8 codes. In this case, it does not
216			diagnose an invalid UTF-8 string.
217	nigel	63	</P>
218			<P>
219	ph10	211	If you pass an invalid UTF-8 string when PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK is set, what
220			happens depends on why the string is invalid. If the string conforms to the
221			"old" definition of UTF-8 (RFC 2279), it is processed as a string of characters
222			in the range 0 to 0x7FFFFFFF. In other words, apart from the initial validity
223			test, PCRE (when in UTF-8 mode) handles strings according to the more liberal
224			rules of RFC 2279. However, if the string does not even conform to RFC 2279,
225			the result is undefined. Your program may crash.
226			</P>
227			<P>
228			If you want to process strings of values in the full range 0 to 0x7FFFFFFF,
229			encoded in a UTF-8-like manner as per the old RFC, you can set
230			PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK to bypass the more restrictive test. However, in this
231			situation, you will have to apply your own validity check.
232			</P>
233			<br><b>
234			General comments about UTF-8 mode
235			</b><br>
236			<P>
237			1. An unbraced hexadecimal escape sequence (such as \xb3) matches a two-byte
238	nigel	87	UTF-8 character if the value is greater than 127.
239	nigel	63	</P>
240			<P>
241	ph10	211	2. Octal numbers up to \777 are recognized, and match two-byte UTF-8
242	nigel	91	characters for values greater than \177.
243			</P>
244			<P>
245	ph10	211	3. Repeat quantifiers apply to complete UTF-8 characters, not to individual
246	nigel	63	bytes, for example: \x{100}{3}.
247			</P>
248			<P>
249	ph10	211	4. The dot metacharacter matches one UTF-8 character instead of a single byte.
250	nigel	63	</P>
251			<P>
252	ph10	211	5. The escape sequence \C can be used to match a single byte in UTF-8 mode,
253	nigel	77	but its use can lead to some strange effects. This facility is not available in
254			the alternative matching function, <b>pcre_dfa_exec()</b>.
255	nigel	63	</P>
256			<P>
257	ph10	211	6. The character escapes \b, \B, \d, \D, \s, \S, \w, and \W correctly
258	nigel	63	test characters of any code value, but the characters that PCRE recognizes as
259			digits, spaces, or word characters remain the same set as before, all with
260	nigel	75	values less than 256. This remains true even when PCRE includes Unicode
261			property support, because to do otherwise would slow down PCRE in many common
262			cases. If you really want to test for a wider sense of, say, "digit", you
263	ph10	406	must use Unicode property tests such as \p{Nd}. Note that this also applies to
264			\b, because it is defined in terms of \w and \W.
265	nigel	63	</P>
266			<P>
267	ph10	211	7. Similarly, characters that match the POSIX named character classes are all
268	nigel	75	low-valued characters.
269	nigel	63	</P>
270			<P>
271	ph10	211	8. However, the Perl 5.10 horizontal and vertical whitespace matching escapes
272	ph10	182	(\h, \H, \v, and \V) do match all the appropriate Unicode characters.
273			</P>
274			<P>
275	ph10	211	9. Case-insensitive matching applies only to characters whose values are less
276	nigel	75	than 128, unless PCRE is built with Unicode property support. Even when Unicode
277			property support is available, PCRE still uses its own character tables when
278			checking the case of low-valued characters, so as not to degrade performance.
279			The Unicode property information is used only for characters with higher
280	nigel	87	values. Even when Unicode property support is available, PCRE supports
281			case-insensitive matching only when there is a one-to-one mapping between a
282			letter's cases. There are a small number of many-to-one mappings in Unicode;
283			these are not supported by PCRE.
284	nigel	63	</P>
285			<br><a name="SEC5" href="#TOC1">AUTHOR</a><br>
286			<P>
287	nigel	77	Philip Hazel
288	nigel	63	<br>
289	ph10	99	University Computing Service
290	nigel	63	<br>
291	nigel	93	Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
292	ph10	99	<br>
293	nigel	77	</P>
294			<P>
295			Putting an actual email address here seems to have been a spam magnet, so I've
296	ph10	153	taken it away. If you want to email me, use my two initials, followed by the
297			two digits 10, at the domain cam.ac.uk.
298	ph10	99	</P>
299			<br><a name="SEC6" href="#TOC1">REVISION</a><br>
300			<P>
301	ph10	429	Last updated: 01 September 2009
302	nigel	63	<br>
303	ph10	406	Copyright © 1997-2009 University of Cambridge.
304	ph10	99	<br>
305	nigel	75	<p>
306			Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
307			</p>
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