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1 nigel 63 <html>
2     <head>
3     <title>pcrebuild specification</title>
4     </head>
5     <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#00005A" link="#0066FF" alink="#3399FF" vlink="#2222BB">
6 nigel 75 <h1>pcrebuild 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     <li><a name="TOC1" href="#SEC1">PCRE BUILD-TIME OPTIONS</a>
17 nigel 83 <li><a name="TOC2" href="#SEC2">C++ SUPPORT</a>
18     <li><a name="TOC3" href="#SEC3">UTF-8 SUPPORT</a>
19     <li><a name="TOC4" href="#SEC4">UNICODE CHARACTER PROPERTY SUPPORT</a>
20     <li><a name="TOC5" href="#SEC5">CODE VALUE OF NEWLINE</a>
21 ph10 231 <li><a name="TOC6" href="#SEC6">WHAT \R MATCHES</a>
22     <li><a name="TOC7" href="#SEC7">BUILDING SHARED AND STATIC LIBRARIES</a>
23     <li><a name="TOC8" href="#SEC8">POSIX MALLOC USAGE</a>
24     <li><a name="TOC9" href="#SEC9">HANDLING VERY LARGE PATTERNS</a>
25     <li><a name="TOC10" href="#SEC10">AVOIDING EXCESSIVE STACK USAGE</a>
26     <li><a name="TOC11" href="#SEC11">LIMITING PCRE RESOURCE USAGE</a>
27     <li><a name="TOC12" href="#SEC12">CREATING CHARACTER TABLES AT BUILD TIME</a>
28     <li><a name="TOC13" href="#SEC13">USING EBCDIC CODE</a>
29 ph10 286 <li><a name="TOC14" href="#SEC14">PCREGREP OPTIONS FOR COMPRESSED FILE SUPPORT</a>
30 ph10 289 <li><a name="TOC15" href="#SEC15">PCRETEST OPTION FOR LIBREADLINE SUPPORT</a>
31     <li><a name="TOC16" href="#SEC16">SEE ALSO</a>
32     <li><a name="TOC17" href="#SEC17">AUTHOR</a>
33     <li><a name="TOC18" href="#SEC18">REVISION</a>
34 nigel 63 </ul>
35     <br><a name="SEC1" href="#TOC1">PCRE BUILD-TIME OPTIONS</a><br>
36     <P>
37     This document describes the optional features of PCRE that can be selected when
38 ph10 261 the library is compiled. It assumes use of the <b>configure</b> script, where
39     the optional features are selected or deselected by providing options to
40     <b>configure</b> before running the <b>make</b> command. However, the same
41     options can be selected in both Unix-like and non-Unix-like environments using
42     the GUI facility of <b>CMakeSetup</b> if you are using <b>CMake</b> instead of
43     <b>configure</b> to build PCRE.
44     </P>
45     <P>
46     The complete list of options for <b>configure</b> (which includes the standard
47     ones such as the selection of the installation directory) can be obtained by
48     running
49 nigel 63 <pre>
50     ./configure --help
51 nigel 75 </pre>
52 ph10 128 The following sections include descriptions of options whose names begin with
53     --enable or --disable. These settings specify changes to the defaults for the
54 nigel 63 <b>configure</b> command. Because of the way that <b>configure</b> works,
55     --enable and --disable always come in pairs, so the complementary option always
56     exists as well, but as it specifies the default, it is not described.
57     </P>
58 nigel 83 <br><a name="SEC2" href="#TOC1">C++ SUPPORT</a><br>
59 nigel 63 <P>
60 nigel 83 By default, the <b>configure</b> script will search for a C++ compiler and C++
61     header files. If it finds them, it automatically builds the C++ wrapper library
62     for PCRE. You can disable this by adding
63     <pre>
64     --disable-cpp
65     </pre>
66     to the <b>configure</b> command.
67     </P>
68     <br><a name="SEC3" href="#TOC1">UTF-8 SUPPORT</a><br>
69     <P>
70 nigel 63 To build PCRE with support for UTF-8 character strings, add
71     <pre>
72     --enable-utf8
73 nigel 75 </pre>
74 nigel 63 to the <b>configure</b> command. Of itself, this does not make PCRE treat
75     strings as UTF-8. As well as compiling PCRE with this option, you also have
76     have to set the PCRE_UTF8 option when you call the <b>pcre_compile()</b>
77     function.
78     </P>
79 nigel 83 <br><a name="SEC4" href="#TOC1">UNICODE CHARACTER PROPERTY SUPPORT</a><br>
80 nigel 63 <P>
81 nigel 75 UTF-8 support allows PCRE to process character values greater than 255 in the
82     strings that it handles. On its own, however, it does not provide any
83     facilities for accessing the properties of such characters. If you want to be
84     able to use the pattern escapes \P, \p, and \X, which refer to Unicode
85     character properties, you must add
86     <pre>
87     --enable-unicode-properties
88     </pre>
89     to the <b>configure</b> command. This implies UTF-8 support, even if you have
90     not explicitly requested it.
91     </P>
92     <P>
93 ph10 128 Including Unicode property support adds around 30K of tables to the PCRE
94     library. Only the general category properties such as <i>Lu</i> and <i>Nd</i> are
95     supported. Details are given in the
96 nigel 75 <a href="pcrepattern.html"><b>pcrepattern</b></a>
97     documentation.
98     </P>
99 nigel 83 <br><a name="SEC5" href="#TOC1">CODE VALUE OF NEWLINE</a><br>
100 nigel 75 <P>
101 nigel 91 By default, PCRE interprets character 10 (linefeed, LF) as indicating the end
102     of a line. This is the normal newline character on Unix-like systems. You can
103     compile PCRE to use character 13 (carriage return, CR) instead, by adding
104 nigel 63 <pre>
105     --enable-newline-is-cr
106 nigel 75 </pre>
107 nigel 91 to the <b>configure</b> command. There is also a --enable-newline-is-lf option,
108     which explicitly specifies linefeed as the newline character.
109     <br>
110     <br>
111     Alternatively, you can specify that line endings are to be indicated by the two
112     character sequence CRLF. If you want this, add
113     <pre>
114     --enable-newline-is-crlf
115     </pre>
116 nigel 93 to the <b>configure</b> command. There is a fourth option, specified by
117     <pre>
118 ph10 150 --enable-newline-is-anycrlf
119     </pre>
120     which causes PCRE to recognize any of the three sequences CR, LF, or CRLF as
121     indicating a line ending. Finally, a fifth option, specified by
122     <pre>
123 nigel 93 --enable-newline-is-any
124     </pre>
125 ph10 150 causes PCRE to recognize any Unicode newline sequence.
126 nigel 63 </P>
127 nigel 93 <P>
128     Whatever line ending convention is selected when PCRE is built can be
129     overridden when the library functions are called. At build time it is
130     conventional to use the standard for your operating system.
131     </P>
132 ph10 231 <br><a name="SEC6" href="#TOC1">WHAT \R MATCHES</a><br>
133 nigel 63 <P>
134 ph10 231 By default, the sequence \R in a pattern matches any Unicode newline sequence,
135     whatever has been selected as the line ending sequence. If you specify
136     <pre>
137     --enable-bsr-anycrlf
138     </pre>
139     the default is changed so that \R matches only CR, LF, or CRLF. Whatever is
140     selected when PCRE is built can be overridden when the library functions are
141     called.
142     </P>
143     <br><a name="SEC7" href="#TOC1">BUILDING SHARED AND STATIC LIBRARIES</a><br>
144     <P>
145 nigel 63 The PCRE building process uses <b>libtool</b> to build both shared and static
146     Unix libraries by default. You can suppress one of these by adding one of
147     <pre>
148     --disable-shared
149     --disable-static
150 nigel 75 </pre>
151 nigel 63 to the <b>configure</b> command, as required.
152     </P>
153 ph10 231 <br><a name="SEC8" href="#TOC1">POSIX MALLOC USAGE</a><br>
154 nigel 63 <P>
155 nigel 75 When PCRE is called through the POSIX interface (see the
156     <a href="pcreposix.html"><b>pcreposix</b></a>
157 nigel 63 documentation), additional working storage is required for holding the pointers
158 nigel 75 to capturing substrings, because PCRE requires three integers per substring,
159 nigel 63 whereas the POSIX interface provides only two. If the number of expected
160     substrings is small, the wrapper function uses space on the stack, because this
161     is faster than using <b>malloc()</b> for each call. The default threshold above
162     which the stack is no longer used is 10; it can be changed by adding a setting
163     such as
164     <pre>
165     --with-posix-malloc-threshold=20
166 nigel 75 </pre>
167 nigel 63 to the <b>configure</b> command.
168     </P>
169 ph10 231 <br><a name="SEC9" href="#TOC1">HANDLING VERY LARGE PATTERNS</a><br>
170 nigel 63 <P>
171     Within a compiled pattern, offset values are used to point from one part to
172     another (for example, from an opening parenthesis to an alternation
173 nigel 75 metacharacter). By default, two-byte values are used for these offsets, leading
174 nigel 63 to a maximum size for a compiled pattern of around 64K. This is sufficient to
175     handle all but the most gigantic patterns. Nevertheless, some people do want to
176     process enormous patterns, so it is possible to compile PCRE to use three-byte
177     or four-byte offsets by adding a setting such as
178     <pre>
179     --with-link-size=3
180 nigel 75 </pre>
181 nigel 63 to the <b>configure</b> command. The value given must be 2, 3, or 4. Using
182     longer offsets slows down the operation of PCRE because it has to load
183     additional bytes when handling them.
184     </P>
185 ph10 231 <br><a name="SEC10" href="#TOC1">AVOIDING EXCESSIVE STACK USAGE</a><br>
186 nigel 63 <P>
187 nigel 77 When matching with the <b>pcre_exec()</b> function, PCRE implements backtracking
188     by making recursive calls to an internal function called <b>match()</b>. In
189     environments where the size of the stack is limited, this can severely limit
190     PCRE's operation. (The Unix environment does not usually suffer from this
191 nigel 91 problem, but it may sometimes be necessary to increase the maximum stack size.
192     There is a discussion in the
193     <a href="pcrestack.html"><b>pcrestack</b></a>
194     documentation.) An alternative approach to recursion that uses memory from the
195     heap to remember data, instead of using recursive function calls, has been
196     implemented to work round the problem of limited stack size. If you want to
197     build a version of PCRE that works this way, add
198 nigel 73 <pre>
199     --disable-stack-for-recursion
200 nigel 75 </pre>
201 nigel 73 to the <b>configure</b> command. With this configuration, PCRE will use the
202     <b>pcre_stack_malloc</b> and <b>pcre_stack_free</b> variables to call memory
203 ph10 182 management functions. By default these point to <b>malloc()</b> and
204     <b>free()</b>, but you can replace the pointers so that your own functions are
205     used.
206 nigel 73 </P>
207 ph10 182 <P>
208     Separate functions are provided rather than using <b>pcre_malloc</b> and
209     <b>pcre_free</b> because the usage is very predictable: the block sizes
210     requested are always the same, and the blocks are always freed in reverse
211     order. A calling program might be able to implement optimized functions that
212     perform better than <b>malloc()</b> and <b>free()</b>. PCRE runs noticeably more
213     slowly when built in this way. This option affects only the <b>pcre_exec()</b>
214     function; it is not relevant for the the <b>pcre_dfa_exec()</b> function.
215     </P>
216 ph10 231 <br><a name="SEC11" href="#TOC1">LIMITING PCRE RESOURCE USAGE</a><br>
217 nigel 91 <P>
218     Internally, PCRE has a function called <b>match()</b>, which it calls repeatedly
219     (sometimes recursively) when matching a pattern with the <b>pcre_exec()</b>
220     function. By controlling the maximum number of times this function may be
221     called during a single matching operation, a limit can be placed on the
222     resources used by a single call to <b>pcre_exec()</b>. The limit can be changed
223     at run time, as described in the
224     <a href="pcreapi.html"><b>pcreapi</b></a>
225     documentation. The default is 10 million, but this can be changed by adding a
226     setting such as
227     <pre>
228     --with-match-limit=500000
229     </pre>
230     to the <b>configure</b> command. This setting has no effect on the
231     <b>pcre_dfa_exec()</b> matching function.
232     </P>
233     <P>
234     In some environments it is desirable to limit the depth of recursive calls of
235     <b>match()</b> more strictly than the total number of calls, in order to
236     restrict the maximum amount of stack (or heap, if --disable-stack-for-recursion
237     is specified) that is used. A second limit controls this; it defaults to the
238     value that is set for --with-match-limit, which imposes no additional
239     constraints. However, you can set a lower limit by adding, for example,
240     <pre>
241     --with-match-limit-recursion=10000
242     </pre>
243     to the <b>configure</b> command. This value can also be overridden at run time.
244     </P>
245 ph10 231 <br><a name="SEC12" href="#TOC1">CREATING CHARACTER TABLES AT BUILD TIME</a><br>
246 nigel 73 <P>
247 ph10 128 PCRE uses fixed tables for processing characters whose code values are less
248     than 256. By default, PCRE is built with a set of tables that are distributed
249     in the file <i>pcre_chartables.c.dist</i>. These tables are for ASCII codes
250     only. If you add
251     <pre>
252     --enable-rebuild-chartables
253     </pre>
254     to the <b>configure</b> command, the distributed tables are no longer used.
255     Instead, a program called <b>dftables</b> is compiled and run. This outputs the
256     source for new set of tables, created in the default locale of your C runtime
257     system. (This method of replacing the tables does not work if you are cross
258     compiling, because <b>dftables</b> is run on the local host. If you need to
259     create alternative tables when cross compiling, you will have to do so "by
260     hand".)
261     </P>
262 ph10 231 <br><a name="SEC13" href="#TOC1">USING EBCDIC CODE</a><br>
263 ph10 128 <P>
264 nigel 73 PCRE assumes by default that it will run in an environment where the character
265 ph10 197 code is ASCII (or Unicode, which is a superset of ASCII). This is the case for
266     most computer operating systems. PCRE can, however, be compiled to run in an
267     EBCDIC environment by adding
268 nigel 73 <pre>
269     --enable-ebcdic
270 nigel 75 </pre>
271 ph10 128 to the <b>configure</b> command. This setting implies
272 ph10 197 --enable-rebuild-chartables. You should only use it if you know that you are in
273     an EBCDIC environment (for example, an IBM mainframe operating system).
274 nigel 73 </P>
275 ph10 286 <br><a name="SEC14" href="#TOC1">PCREGREP OPTIONS FOR COMPRESSED FILE SUPPORT</a><br>
276 nigel 73 <P>
277 ph10 286 By default, <b>pcregrep</b> reads all files as plain text. You can build it so
278     that it recognizes files whose names end in <b>.gz</b> or <b>.bz2</b>, and reads
279     them with <b>libz</b> or <b>libbz2</b>, respectively, by adding one or both of
280     <pre>
281     --enable-pcregrep-libz
282     --enable-pcregrep-libbz2
283     </pre>
284     to the <b>configure</b> command. These options naturally require that the
285     relevant libraries are installed on your system. Configuration will fail if
286     they are not.
287     </P>
288 ph10 289 <br><a name="SEC15" href="#TOC1">PCRETEST OPTION FOR LIBREADLINE SUPPORT</a><br>
289 ph10 286 <P>
290 ph10 289 If you add
291     <pre>
292     --enable-pcretest-libreadline
293     </pre>
294     to the <b>configure</b> command, <b>pcretest</b> is linked with the
295     <b>libreadline</b> library, and when its input is from a terminal, it reads it
296     using the <b>readline()</b> function. This provides line-editing and history
297     facilities. Note that <b>libreadline</b> is GPL-licenced, so if you distribute a
298     binary of <b>pcretest</b> linked in this way, there may be licensing issues.
299     </P>
300 ph10 345 <P>
301     Setting this option causes the <b>-lreadline</b> option to be added to the
302     <b>pcretest</b> build. In many operating environments with a sytem-installed
303     <b>libreadline</b> this is sufficient. However, in some environments (e.g.
304     if an unmodified distribution version of readline is in use), some extra
305     configuration may be necessary. The INSTALL file for <b>libreadline</b> says
306     this:
307     <pre>
308     "Readline uses the termcap functions, but does not link with the
309     termcap or curses library itself, allowing applications which link
310     with readline the to choose an appropriate library."
311     </pre>
312     If your environment has not been set up so that an appropriate library is
313     automatically included, you may need to add something like
314     <pre>
315     LIBS="-ncurses"
316     </pre>
317     immediately before the <b>configure</b> command.
318     </P>
319 ph10 289 <br><a name="SEC16" href="#TOC1">SEE ALSO</a><br>
320     <P>
321 nigel 93 <b>pcreapi</b>(3), <b>pcre_config</b>(3).
322     </P>
323 ph10 289 <br><a name="SEC17" href="#TOC1">AUTHOR</a><br>
324 nigel 93 <P>
325 ph10 99 Philip Hazel
326 nigel 63 <br>
327 ph10 99 University Computing Service
328     <br>
329     Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
330     <br>
331     </P>
332 ph10 289 <br><a name="SEC18" href="#TOC1">REVISION</a><br>
333 ph10 99 <P>
334 ph10 345 Last updated: 13 April 2008
335 ph10 99 <br>
336 ph10 345 Copyright &copy; 1997-2008 University of Cambridge.
337 ph10 99 <br>
338 nigel 75 <p>
339     Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
340     </p>

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