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1 ph10 678 <html>
2     <head>
3     <title>pcrejit specification</title>
4     </head>
5     <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#00005A" link="#0066FF" alink="#3399FF" vlink="#2222BB">
6     <h1>pcrejit man page</h1>
7     <p>
8     Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
9     </p>
10     <p>
11     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     <br>
15     <ul>
16 ph10 691 <li><a name="TOC1" href="#SEC1">PCRE JUST-IN-TIME COMPILER SUPPORT</a>
17     <li><a name="TOC2" href="#SEC2">AVAILABILITY OF JIT SUPPORT</a>
18     <li><a name="TOC3" href="#SEC3">SIMPLE USE OF JIT</a>
19     <li><a name="TOC4" href="#SEC4">UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS AND PATTERN ITEMS</a>
20     <li><a name="TOC5" href="#SEC5">RETURN VALUES FROM JIT EXECUTION</a>
21     <li><a name="TOC6" href="#SEC6">SAVING AND RESTORING COMPILED PATTERNS</a>
22     <li><a name="TOC7" href="#SEC7">CONTROLLING THE JIT STACK</a>
23 ph10 835 <li><a name="TOC8" href="#SEC8">EXAMPLE CODE</a>
24     <li><a name="TOC9" href="#SEC9">SEE ALSO</a>
25     <li><a name="TOC10" href="#SEC10">AUTHOR</a>
26     <li><a name="TOC11" href="#SEC11">REVISION</a>
27 ph10 678 </ul>
28 ph10 691 <br><a name="SEC1" href="#TOC1">PCRE JUST-IN-TIME COMPILER SUPPORT</a><br>
29     <P>
30     Just-in-time compiling is a heavyweight optimization that can greatly speed up
31     pattern matching. However, it comes at the cost of extra processing before the
32     match is performed. Therefore, it is of most benefit when the same pattern is
33     going to be matched many times. This does not necessarily mean many calls of
34     \fPpcre_exec()\fP; if the pattern is not anchored, matching attempts may take
35     place many times at various positions in the subject, even for a single call to
36     <b>pcre_exec()</b>. If the subject string is very long, it may still pay to use
37     JIT for one-off matches.
38     </P>
39     <P>
40     JIT support applies only to the traditional matching function,
41     <b>pcre_exec()</b>. It does not apply when <b>pcre_dfa_exec()</b> is being used.
42     The code for this support was written by Zoltan Herczeg.
43     </P>
44     <br><a name="SEC2" href="#TOC1">AVAILABILITY OF JIT SUPPORT</a><br>
45     <P>
46     JIT support is an optional feature of PCRE. The "configure" option --enable-jit
47     (or equivalent CMake option) must be set when PCRE is built if you want to use
48     JIT. The support is limited to the following hardware platforms:
49     <pre>
50     ARM v5, v7, and Thumb2
51     Intel x86 32-bit and 64-bit
52     MIPS 32-bit
53 ph10 733 Power PC 32-bit and 64-bit (experimental)
54 ph10 691 </pre>
55 ph10 733 The Power PC support is designated as experimental because it has not been
56     fully tested. If --enable-jit is set on an unsupported platform, compilation
57     fails.
58 ph10 691 </P>
59     <P>
60 ph10 835 A program can tell if JIT support is available by calling <b>pcre_config()</b>
61     with the PCRE_CONFIG_JIT option. The result is 1 when JIT is available, and 0
62     otherwise. However, a simple program does not need to check this in order to
63     use JIT. The API is implemented in a way that falls back to the ordinary PCRE
64     code if JIT is not available.
65 ph10 691 </P>
66     <br><a name="SEC3" href="#TOC1">SIMPLE USE OF JIT</a><br>
67     <P>
68     You have to do two things to make use of the JIT support in the simplest way:
69     <pre>
70     (1) Call <b>pcre_study()</b> with the PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE option for
71     each compiled pattern, and pass the resulting <b>pcre_extra</b> block to
72     <b>pcre_exec()</b>.
73    
74     (2) Use <b>pcre_free_study()</b> to free the <b>pcre_extra</b> block when it is
75     no longer needed instead of just freeing it yourself. This
76     ensures that any JIT data is also freed.
77     </pre>
78     In some circumstances you may need to call additional functions. These are
79     described in the section entitled
80     <a href="#stackcontrol">"Controlling the JIT stack"</a>
81     below.
82     </P>
83     <P>
84     If JIT support is not available, PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE is ignored, and no JIT
85     data is set up. Otherwise, the compiled pattern is passed to the JIT compiler,
86     which turns it into machine code that executes much faster than the normal
87     interpretive code. When <b>pcre_exec()</b> is passed a <b>pcre_extra</b> block
88     containing a pointer to JIT code, it obeys that instead of the normal code. The
89     result is identical, but the code runs much faster.
90     </P>
91     <P>
92     There are some <b>pcre_exec()</b> options that are not supported for JIT
93     execution. There are also some pattern items that JIT cannot handle. Details
94     are given below. In both cases, execution automatically falls back to the
95     interpretive code.
96     </P>
97     <P>
98     If the JIT compiler finds an unsupported item, no JIT data is generated. You
99     can find out if JIT execution is available after studying a pattern by calling
100     <b>pcre_fullinfo()</b> with the PCRE_INFO_JIT option. A result of 1 means that
101 ph10 708 JIT compilation was successful. A result of 0 means that JIT support is not
102 ph10 691 available, or the pattern was not studied with PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE, or the
103     JIT compiler was not able to handle the pattern.
104     </P>
105 ph10 708 <P>
106     Once a pattern has been studied, with or without JIT, it can be used as many
107     times as you like for matching different subject strings.
108     </P>
109 ph10 691 <br><a name="SEC4" href="#TOC1">UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS AND PATTERN ITEMS</a><br>
110     <P>
111     The only <b>pcre_exec()</b> options that are supported for JIT execution are
112     PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK, PCRE_NOTBOL, PCRE_NOTEOL, PCRE_NOTEMPTY, and
113     PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART. Note in particular that partial matching is not
114     supported.
115     </P>
116     <P>
117     The unsupported pattern items are:
118     <pre>
119 ph10 835 \C match a single byte; not supported in UTF-8 mode
120 ph10 691 (?Cn) callouts
121 ph10 835 (?(&#60;name&#62;)... conditional test on setting of a named subpattern
122     (?(R)... conditional test on whole pattern recursion
123     (?(Rn)... conditional test on recursion, by number
124     (?(R&name)... conditional test on recursion, by name
125 ph10 691 (*COMMIT) )
126     (*MARK) )
127     (*PRUNE) ) the backtracking control verbs
128     (*SKIP) )
129     (*THEN) )
130     </pre>
131     Support for some of these may be added in future.
132     </P>
133     <br><a name="SEC5" href="#TOC1">RETURN VALUES FROM JIT EXECUTION</a><br>
134     <P>
135     When a pattern is matched using JIT execution, the return values are the same
136     as those given by the interpretive <b>pcre_exec()</b> code, with the addition of
137     one new error code: PCRE_ERROR_JIT_STACKLIMIT. This means that the memory used
138     for the JIT stack was insufficient. See
139     <a href="#stackcontrol">"Controlling the JIT stack"</a>
140     below for a discussion of JIT stack usage. For compatibility with the
141     interpretive <b>pcre_exec()</b> code, no more than two-thirds of the
142     <i>ovector</i> argument is used for passing back captured substrings.
143     </P>
144     <P>
145     The error code PCRE_ERROR_MATCHLIMIT is returned by the JIT code if searching a
146     very large pattern tree goes on for too long, as it is in the same circumstance
147     when JIT is not used, but the details of exactly what is counted are not the
148     same. The PCRE_ERROR_RECURSIONLIMIT error code is never returned by JIT
149     execution.
150     </P>
151     <br><a name="SEC6" href="#TOC1">SAVING AND RESTORING COMPILED PATTERNS</a><br>
152     <P>
153     The code that is generated by the JIT compiler is architecture-specific, and is
154 ph10 708 also position dependent. For those reasons it cannot be saved (in a file or
155     database) and restored later like the bytecode and other data of a compiled
156     pattern. Saving and restoring compiled patterns is not something many people
157     do. More detail about this facility is given in the
158     <a href="pcreprecompile.html"><b>pcreprecompile</b></a>
159     documentation. It should be possible to run <b>pcre_study()</b> on a saved and
160     restored pattern, and thereby recreate the JIT data, but because JIT
161     compilation uses significant resources, it is probably not worth doing this;
162     you might as well recompile the original pattern.
163 ph10 691 <a name="stackcontrol"></a></P>
164     <br><a name="SEC7" href="#TOC1">CONTROLLING THE JIT STACK</a><br>
165     <P>
166     When the compiled JIT code runs, it needs a block of memory to use as a stack.
167     By default, it uses 32K on the machine stack. However, some large or
168     complicated patterns need more than this. The error PCRE_ERROR_JIT_STACKLIMIT
169     is given when there is not enough stack. Three functions are provided for
170 ph10 835 managing blocks of memory for use as JIT stacks.
171 ph10 691 </P>
172     <P>
173     The <b>pcre_jit_stack_alloc()</b> function creates a JIT stack. Its arguments
174     are a starting size and a maximum size, and it returns a pointer to an opaque
175     structure of type <b>pcre_jit_stack</b>, or NULL if there is an error. The
176     <b>pcre_jit_stack_free()</b> function can be used to free a stack that is no
177     longer needed. (For the technically minded: the address space is allocated by
178     mmap or VirtualAlloc.)
179     </P>
180     <P>
181     JIT uses far less memory for recursion than the interpretive code,
182     and a maximum stack size of 512K to 1M should be more than enough for any
183     pattern.
184     </P>
185     <P>
186     The <b>pcre_assign_jit_stack()</b> function specifies which stack JIT code
187     should use. Its arguments are as follows:
188     <pre>
189     pcre_extra *extra
190     pcre_jit_callback callback
191     void *data
192     </pre>
193     The <i>extra</i> argument must be the result of studying a pattern with
194     PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE. There are three cases for the values of the other two
195     options:
196     <pre>
197     (1) If <i>callback</i> is NULL and <i>data</i> is NULL, an internal 32K block
198     on the machine stack is used.
199    
200     (2) If <i>callback</i> is NULL and <i>data</i> is not NULL, <i>data</i> must be
201     a valid JIT stack, the result of calling <b>pcre_jit_stack_alloc()</b>.
202    
203     (3) If <i>callback</i> not NULL, it must point to a function that is called
204     with <i>data</i> as an argument at the start of matching, in order to
205     set up a JIT stack. If the result is NULL, the internal 32K stack
206     is used; otherwise the return value must be a valid JIT stack,
207     the result of calling <b>pcre_jit_stack_alloc()</b>.
208     </pre>
209     You may safely assign the same JIT stack to more than one pattern, as long as
210     they are all matched sequentially in the same thread. In a multithread
211     application, each thread must use its own JIT stack.
212     </P>
213     <P>
214     Strictly speaking, even more is allowed. You can assign the same stack to any
215     number of patterns as long as they are not used for matching by multiple
216     threads at the same time. For example, you can assign the same stack to all
217     compiled patterns, and use a global mutex in the callback to wait until the
218     stack is available for use. However, this is an inefficient solution, and
219     not recommended.
220     </P>
221     <P>
222     This is a suggestion for how a typical multithreaded program might operate:
223     <pre>
224     During thread initalization
225     thread_local_var = pcre_jit_stack_alloc(...)
226    
227     During thread exit
228     pcre_jit_stack_free(thread_local_var)
229    
230     Use a one-line callback function
231     return thread_local_var
232     </pre>
233     All the functions described in this section do nothing if JIT is not available,
234     and <b>pcre_assign_jit_stack()</b> does nothing unless the <b>extra</b> argument
235     is non-NULL and points to a <b>pcre_extra</b> block that is the result of a
236     successful study with PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE.
237     </P>
238 ph10 835 <br><a name="SEC8" href="#TOC1">EXAMPLE CODE</a><br>
239 ph10 691 <P>
240     This is a single-threaded example that specifies a JIT stack without using a
241     callback.
242     <pre>
243     int rc;
244     int ovector[30];
245     pcre *re;
246     pcre_extra *extra;
247     pcre_jit_stack *jit_stack;
248    
249     re = pcre_compile(pattern, 0, &error, &erroffset, NULL);
250     /* Check for errors */
251     extra = pcre_study(re, PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE, &error);
252     jit_stack = pcre_jit_stack_alloc(32*1024, 512*1024);
253     /* Check for error (NULL) */
254     pcre_assign_jit_stack(extra, NULL, jit_stack);
255     rc = pcre_exec(re, extra, subject, length, 0, 0, ovector, 30);
256     /* Check results */
257     pcre_free(re);
258     pcre_free_study(extra);
259     pcre_jit_stack_free(jit_stack);
260    
261     </PRE>
262     </P>
263 ph10 835 <br><a name="SEC9" href="#TOC1">SEE ALSO</a><br>
264 ph10 691 <P>
265     <b>pcreapi</b>(3)
266     </P>
267 ph10 835 <br><a name="SEC10" href="#TOC1">AUTHOR</a><br>
268 ph10 691 <P>
269 ph10 835 Philip Hazel
270 ph10 691 <br>
271     University Computing Service
272     <br>
273     Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
274     <br>
275     </P>
276 ph10 835 <br><a name="SEC11" href="#TOC1">REVISION</a><br>
277 ph10 691 <P>
278 ph10 835 Last updated: 19 October 2011
279 ph10 691 <br>
280     Copyright &copy; 1997-2011 University of Cambridge.
281     <br>
282 ph10 678 <p>
283     Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>.
284     </p>

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