NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
PCRE REGULAR EXPRESSION DETAILS
The syntax and semantics of the regular expressions that are supported
by PCRE are described in detail below. There is a quick-reference
syntax summary in the pcresyntax page. PCRE tries to match Perl syntax
and semantics as closely as it can. PCRE also supports some alternative
regular expression syntax (which does not conflict with the Perl
syntax) in order to provide some compatibility with regular expressions
in Python, .NET, and Oniguruma.
Perl’s regular expressions are described in its own documentation, and
regular expressions in general are covered in a number of books, some
of which have copious examples. Jeffrey Friedl’s "Mastering Regular
Expressions", published by O’Reilly, covers regular expressions in
great detail. This description of PCRE’s regular expressions is
intended as reference material.
The original operation of PCRE was on strings of one-byte characters.
However, there is now also support for UTF-8 character strings. To use
this, PCRE must be built to include UTF-8 support, and you must call
pcre_compile() or pcre_compile2() with the PCRE_UTF8 option. There is
also a special sequence that can be given at the start of a pattern:
(*UTF8)
Starting a pattern with this sequence is equivalent to setting the
PCRE_UTF8 option. This feature is not Perl-compatible. How setting
UTF-8 mode affects pattern matching is mentioned in several places
below. There is also a summary of UTF-8 features in the section on
UTF-8 support in the main pcre page.
The remainder of this document discusses the patterns that are
supported by PCRE when its main matching function, pcre_exec(), is
used. From release 6.0, PCRE offers a second matching function,
pcre_dfa_exec(), which matches using a different algorithm that is not
Perl-compatible. Some of the features discussed below are not available
when pcre_dfa_exec() is used. The advantages and disadvantages of the
alternative function, and how it differs from the normal function, are
discussed in the pcrematching page.
NEWLINE CONVENTIONS
PCRE supports five different conventions for indicating line breaks in
strings: a single CR (carriage return) character, a single LF
(linefeed) character, the two-character sequence CRLF, any of the three
preceding, or any Unicode newline sequence. The pcreapi page has
further discussion about newlines, and shows how to set the newline
convention in the options arguments for the compiling and matching
functions.
It is also possible to specify a newline convention by starting a
pattern string with one of the following five sequences:
(*CR) carriage return
(*LF) linefeed
(*CRLF) carriage return, followed by linefeed
(*ANYCRLF) any of the three above
(*ANY) all Unicode newline sequences
These override the default and the options given to pcre_compile() or
pcre_compile2(). For example, on a Unix system where LF is the default
newline sequence, the pattern
(*CR)a.b
changes the convention to CR. That pattern matches "a\nb" because LF is
no longer a newline. Note that these special settings, which are not
Perl-compatible, are recognized only at the very start of a pattern,
and that they must be in upper case. If more than one of them is
present, the last one is used.
The newline convention does not affect what the \R escape sequence
matches. By default, this is any Unicode newline sequence, for Perl
compatibility. However, this can be changed; see the description of \R
in the section entitled "Newline sequences" below. A change of \R
setting can be combined with a change of newline convention.
CHARACTERS AND METACHARACTERS
A regular expression is a pattern that is matched against a subject
string from left to right. Most characters stand for themselves in a
pattern, and match the corresponding characters in the subject. As a
trivial example, the pattern
The quick brown fox
matches a portion of a subject string that is identical to itself. When
caseless matching is specified (the PCRE_CASELESS option), letters are
matched independently of case. In UTF-8 mode, PCRE always understands
the concept of case for characters whose values are less than 128, so
caseless matching is always possible. For characters with higher
values, the concept of case is supported if PCRE is compiled with
Unicode property support, but not otherwise. If you want to use
caseless matching for characters 128 and above, you must ensure that
PCRE is compiled with Unicode property support as well as with UTF-8
support.
The power of regular expressions comes from the ability to include
alternatives and repetitions in the pattern. These are encoded in the
pattern by the use of metacharacters, which do not stand for themselves
but instead are interpreted in some special way.
There are two different sets of metacharacters: those that are
recognized anywhere in the pattern except within square brackets, and
those that are recognized within square brackets. Outside square
brackets, the metacharacters are as follows:
\ general escape character with several uses
^ assert start of string (or line, in multiline mode)
$ assert end of string (or line, in multiline mode)
. match any character except newline (by default)
[ start character class definition
| start of alternative branch
( start subpattern
) end subpattern
? extends the meaning of (
also 0 or 1 quantifier
also quantifier minimizer
* 0 or more quantifier
+ 1 or more quantifier
also "possessive quantifier"
{ start min/max quantifier
Part of a pattern that is in square brackets is called a "character
class". In a character class the only metacharacters are:
\ general escape character
^ negate the class, but only if the first character
- indicates character range
[ POSIX character class (only if followed by POSIX
syntax)
] terminates the character class
The following sections describe the use of each of the metacharacters.
BACKSLASH
The backslash character has several uses. Firstly, if it is followed by
a non-alphanumeric character, it takes away any special meaning that
character may have. This use of backslash as an escape character
applies both inside and outside character classes.
For example, if you want to match a * character, you write \* in the
pattern. This escaping action applies whether or not the following
character would otherwise be interpreted as a metacharacter, so it is
always safe to precede a non-alphanumeric with backslash to specify
that it stands for itself. In particular, if you want to match a
backslash, you write \\.
If a pattern is compiled with the PCRE_EXTENDED option, whitespace in
the pattern (other than in a character class) and characters between a
# outside a character class and the next newline are ignored. An
escaping backslash can be used to include a whitespace or # character
as part of the pattern.
If you want to remove the special meaning from a sequence of
characters, you can do so by putting them between \Q and \E. This is
different from Perl in that $ and @ are handled as literals in \Q...\E
sequences in PCRE, whereas in Perl, $ and @ cause variable
interpolation. Note the following examples:
Pattern PCRE matches Perl matches
\Qabc$xyz\E abc$xyz abc followed by the
contents of $xyz
\Qabc\$xyz\E abc\$xyz abc\$xyz
\Qabc\E\$\Qxyz\E abc$xyz abc$xyz
The \Q...\E sequence is recognized both inside and outside character
classes.
Non-printing characters
A second use of backslash provides a way of encoding non-printing
characters in patterns in a visible manner. There is no restriction on
the appearance of non-printing characters, apart from the binary zero
that terminates a pattern, but when a pattern is being prepared by text
editing, it is often easier to use one of the following escape
sequences than the binary character it represents:
\a alarm, that is, the BEL character (hex 07)
\cx "control-x", where x is any character
\e escape (hex 1B)
\f formfeed (hex 0C)
\n linefeed (hex 0A)
\r carriage return (hex 0D)
\t tab (hex 09)
\ddd character with octal code ddd, or back reference
\xhh character with hex code hh
\x{hhh..} character with hex code hhh..
The precise effect of \cx is as follows: if x is a lower case letter,
it is converted to upper case. Then bit 6 of the character (hex 40) is
inverted. Thus \cz becomes hex 1A, but \c{ becomes hex 3B, while \c;
becomes hex 7B.
After \x, from zero to two hexadecimal digits are read (letters can be
in upper or lower case). Any number of hexadecimal digits may appear
between \x{ and }, but the value of the character code must be less
than 256 in non-UTF-8 mode, and less than 2**31 in UTF-8 mode. That is,
the maximum value in hexadecimal is 7FFFFFFF. Note that this is bigger
than the largest Unicode code point, which is 10FFFF.
If characters other than hexadecimal digits appear between \x{ and },
or if there is no terminating }, this form of escape is not recognized.
Instead, the initial \x will be interpreted as a basic hexadecimal
escape, with no following digits, giving a character whose value is
zero.
Characters whose value is less than 256 can be defined by either of the
two syntaxes for \x. There is no difference in the way they are
handled. For example, \xdc is exactly the same as \x{dc}.
After \0 up to two further octal digits are read. If there are fewer
than two digits, just those that are present are used. Thus the
sequence \0\x\07 specifies two binary zeros followed by a BEL character
(code value 7). Make sure you supply two digits after the initial zero
if the pattern character that follows is itself an octal digit.
The handling of a backslash followed by a digit other than 0 is
complicated. Outside a character class, PCRE reads it and any
following digits as a decimal number. If the number is less than 10, or
if there have been at least that many previous capturing left
parentheses in the expression, the entire sequence is taken as a back
reference. A description of how this works is given later, following
the discussion of parenthesized subpatterns.
Inside a character class, or if the decimal number is greater than 9
and there have not been that many capturing subpatterns, PCRE re-reads
up to three octal digits following the backslash, and uses them to
generate a data character. Any subsequent digits stand for themselves.
In non-UTF-8 mode, the value of a character specified in octal must be
less than \400. In UTF-8 mode, values up to \777 are permitted. For
example:
\040 is another way of writing a space
\40 is the same, provided there are fewer than 40
previous capturing subpatterns
\7 is always a back reference
\11 might be a back reference, or another way of
writing a tab
\011 is always a tab
\0113 is a tab followed by the character "3"
\113 might be a back reference, otherwise the
character with octal code 113
\377 might be a back reference, otherwise
the byte consisting entirely of 1 bits
\81 is either a back reference, or a binary zero
followed by the two characters "8" and "1"
Note that octal values of 100 or greater must not be introduced by a
leading zero, because no more than three octal digits are ever read.
All the sequences that define a single character value can be used both
inside and outside character classes. In addition, inside a character
class, the sequence \b is interpreted as the backspace character (hex
08), and the sequences \R and \X are interpreted as the characters "R"
and "X", respectively. Outside a character class, these sequences have
different meanings (see below).
Absolute and relative back references
The sequence \g followed by an unsigned or a negative number,
optionally enclosed in braces, is an absolute or relative back
reference. A named back reference can be coded as \g{name}. Back
references are discussed later, following the discussion of
parenthesized subpatterns.
Absolute and relative subroutine calls
For compatibility with Oniguruma, the non-Perl syntax \g followed by a
name or a number enclosed either in angle brackets or single quotes, is
an alternative syntax for referencing a subpattern as a "subroutine".
Details are discussed later. Note that \g{...} (Perl syntax) and
\g<...> (Oniguruma syntax) are not synonymous. The former is a back
reference; the latter is a subroutine call.
Generic character types
Another use of backslash is for specifying generic character types. The
following are always recognized:
\d any decimal digit
\D any character that is not a decimal digit
\h any horizontal whitespace character
\H any character that is not a horizontal whitespace character
\s any whitespace character
\S any character that is not a whitespace character
\v any vertical whitespace character
\V any character that is not a vertical whitespace character
\w any "word" character
\W any "non-word" character
Each pair of escape sequences partitions the complete set of characters
into two disjoint sets. Any given character matches one, and only one,
of each pair.
These character type sequences can appear both inside and outside
character classes. They each match one character of the appropriate
type. If the current matching point is at the end of the subject
string, all of them fail, since there is no character to match.
For compatibility with Perl, \s does not match the VT character (code
11). This makes it different from the the POSIX "space" class. The \s
characters are HT (9), LF (10), FF (12), CR (13), and space (32). If
"use locale;" is included in a Perl script, \s may match the VT
character. In PCRE, it never does.
In UTF-8 mode, characters with values greater than 128 never match \d,
\s, or \w, and always match \D, \S, and \W. This is true even when
Unicode character property support is available. These sequences retain
their original meanings from before UTF-8 support was available, mainly
for efficiency reasons. Note that this also affects \b, because it is
defined in terms of \w and \W.
The sequences \h, \H, \v, and \V are Perl 5.10 features. In contrast to
the other sequences, these do match certain high-valued codepoints in
UTF-8 mode. The horizontal space characters are:
U+0009 Horizontal tab
U+0020 Space
U+00A0 Non-break space
U+1680 Ogham space mark
U+180E Mongolian vowel separator
U+2000 En quad
U+2001 Em quad
U+2002 En space
U+2003 Em space
U+2004 Three-per-em space
U+2005 Four-per-em space
U+2006 Six-per-em space
U+2007 Figure space
U+2008 Punctuation space
U+2009 Thin space
U+200A Hair space
U+202F Narrow no-break space
U+205F Medium mathematical space
U+3000 Ideographic space
The vertical space characters are:
U+000A Linefeed
U+000B Vertical tab
U+000C Formfeed
U+000D Carriage return
U+0085 Next line
U+2028 Line separator
U+2029 Paragraph separator
A "word" character is an underscore or any character less than 256 that
is a letter or digit. The definition of letters and digits is
controlled by PCRE’s low-valued character tables, and may vary if
locale-specific matching is taking place (see "Locale support" in the
pcreapi page). For example, in a French locale such as "fr_FR" in Unix-
like systems, or "french" in Windows, some character codes greater than
128 are used for accented letters, and these are matched by \w. The use
of locales with Unicode is discouraged.
Newline sequences
Outside a character class, by default, the escape sequence \R matches
any Unicode newline sequence. This is a Perl 5.10 feature. In non-UTF-8
mode \R is equivalent to the following:
(?>\r\n|\n|\x0b|\f|\r|\x85)
This is an example of an "atomic group", details of which are given
below. This particular group matches either the two-character sequence
CR followed by LF, or one of the single characters LF (linefeed,
U+000A), VT (vertical tab, U+000B), FF (formfeed, U+000C), CR (carriage
return, U+000D), or NEL (next line, U+0085). The two-character sequence
is treated as a single unit that cannot be split.
In UTF-8 mode, two additional characters whose codepoints are greater
than 255 are added: LS (line separator, U+2028) and PS (paragraph
separator, U+2029). Unicode character property support is not needed
for these characters to be recognized.
It is possible to restrict \R to match only CR, LF, or CRLF (instead of
the complete set of Unicode line endings) by setting the option
PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF either at compile time or when the pattern is matched.
(BSR is an abbrevation for "backslash R".) This can be made the default
when PCRE is built; if this is the case, the other behaviour can be
requested via the PCRE_BSR_UNICODE option. It is also possible to
specify these settings by starting a pattern string with one of the
following sequences:
(*BSR_ANYCRLF) CR, LF, or CRLF only
(*BSR_UNICODE) any Unicode newline sequence
These override the default and the options given to pcre_compile() or
pcre_compile2(), but they can be overridden by options given to
pcre_exec() or pcre_dfa_exec(). Note that these special settings, which
are not Perl-compatible, are recognized only at the very start of a
pattern, and that they must be in upper case. If more than one of them
is present, the last one is used. They can be combined with a change of
newline convention, for example, a pattern can start with:
(*ANY)(*BSR_ANYCRLF)
Inside a character class, \R matches the letter "R".
Unicode character properties
When PCRE is built with Unicode character property support, three
additional escape sequences that match characters with specific
properties are available. When not in UTF-8 mode, these sequences are
of course limited to testing characters whose codepoints are less than
256, but they do work in this mode. The extra escape sequences are:
\p{xx} a character with the xx property
\P{xx} a character without the xx property
\X an extended Unicode sequence
The property names represented by xx above are limited to the Unicode
script names, the general category properties, and "Any", which matches
any character (including newline). Other properties such as
"InMusicalSymbols" are not currently supported by PCRE. Note that
\P{Any} does not match any characters, so always causes a match
failure.
Sets of Unicode characters are defined as belonging to certain scripts.
A character from one of these sets can be matched using a script name.
For example:
\p{Greek}
\P{Han}
Those that are not part of an identified script are lumped together as
"Common". The current list of scripts is:
Arabic, Armenian, Avestan, Balinese, Bamum, Bengali, Bopomofo, Braille,
Buginese, Buhid, Canadian_Aboriginal, Carian, Cham, Cherokee, Common,
Coptic, Cuneiform, Cypriot, Cyrillic, Deseret, Devanagari,
Egyptian_Hieroglyphs, Ethiopic, Georgian, Glagolitic, Gothic, Greek,
Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Han, Hangul, Hanunoo, Hebrew, Hiragana,
Imperial_Aramaic, Inherited, Inscriptional_Pahlavi,
Inscriptional_Parthian, Javanese, Kaithi, Kannada, Katakana, Kayah_Li,
Kharoshthi, Khmer, Lao, Latin, Lepcha, Limbu, Linear_B, Lisu, Lycian,
Lydian, Malayalam, Meetei_Mayek, Mongolian, Myanmar, New_Tai_Lue, Nko,
Ogham, Old_Italic, Old_Persian, Old_South_Arabian, Old_Turkic,
Ol_Chiki, Oriya, Osmanya, Phags_Pa, Phoenician, Rejang, Runic,
Samaritan, Saurashtra, Shavian, Sinhala, Sundanese, Syloti_Nagri,
Syriac, Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Tai_Le, Tai_Tham, Tai_Viet, Tamil, Telugu,
Thaana, Thai, Tibetan, Tifinagh, Ugaritic, Vai, Yi.
Each character has exactly one general category property, specified by
a two-letter abbreviation. For compatibility with Perl, negation can be
specified by including a circumflex between the opening brace and the
property name. For example, \p{^Lu} is the same as \P{Lu}.
If only one letter is specified with \p or \P, it includes all the
general category properties that start with that letter. In this case,
in the absence of negation, the curly brackets in the escape sequence
are optional; these two examples have the same effect:
\p{L}
\pL
The following general category property codes are supported:
C Other
Cc Control
Cf Format
Cn Unassigned
Co Private use
Cs Surrogate
L Letter
Ll Lower case letter
Lm Modifier letter
Lo Other letter
Lt Title case letter
Lu Upper case letter
M Mark
Mc Spacing mark
Me Enclosing mark
Mn Non-spacing mark
N Number
Nd Decimal number
Nl Letter number
No Other number
P Punctuation
Pc Connector punctuation
Pd Dash punctuation
Pe Close punctuation
Pf Final punctuation
Pi Initial punctuation
Po Other punctuation
Ps Open punctuation
S Symbol
Sc Currency symbol
Sk Modifier symbol
Sm Mathematical symbol
So Other symbol
Z Separator
Zl Line separator
Zp Paragraph separator
Zs Space separator
The special property L& is also supported: it matches a character that
has the Lu, Ll, or Lt property, in other words, a letter that is not
classified as a modifier or "other".
The Cs (Surrogate) property applies only to characters in the range
U+D800 to U+DFFF. Such characters are not valid in UTF-8 strings (see
RFC 3629) and so cannot be tested by PCRE, unless UTF-8 validity
checking has been turned off (see the discussion of PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK
in the pcreapi page). Perl does not support the Cs property.
The long synonyms for property names that Perl supports (such as
\p{Letter}) are not supported by PCRE, nor is it permitted to prefix
any of these properties with "Is".
No character that is in the Unicode table has the Cn (unassigned)
property. Instead, this property is assumed for any code point that is
not in the Unicode table.
Specifying caseless matching does not affect these escape sequences.
For example, \p{Lu} always matches only upper case letters.
The \X escape matches any number of Unicode characters that form an
extended Unicode sequence. \X is equivalent to
(?>\PM\pM*)
That is, it matches a character without the "mark" property, followed
by zero or more characters with the "mark" property, and treats the
sequence as an atomic group (see below). Characters with the "mark"
property are typically accents that affect the preceding character.
None of them have codepoints less than 256, so in non-UTF-8 mode \X
matches any one character.
Matching characters by Unicode property is not fast, because PCRE has
to search a structure that contains data for over fifteen thousand
characters. That is why the traditional escape sequences such as \d and
\w do not use Unicode properties in PCRE.
Resetting the match start
The escape sequence \K, which is a Perl 5.10 feature, causes any
previously matched characters not to be included in the final matched
sequence. For example, the pattern:
foo\Kbar
matches "foobar", but reports that it has matched "bar". This feature
is similar to a lookbehind assertion (described below). However, in
this case, the part of the subject before the real match does not have
to be of fixed length, as lookbehind assertions do. The use of \K does
not interfere with the setting of captured substrings. For example,
when the pattern
(foo)\Kbar
matches "foobar", the first substring is still set to "foo".
Perl documents that the use of \K within assertions is "not well
defined". In PCRE, \K is acted upon when it occurs inside positive
assertions, but is ignored in negative assertions.
Simple assertions
The final use of backslash is for certain simple assertions. An
assertion specifies a condition that has to be met at a particular
point in a match, without consuming any characters from the subject
string. The use of subpatterns for more complicated assertions is
described below. The backslashed assertions are:
\b matches at a word boundary
\B matches when not at a word boundary
\A matches at the start of the subject
\Z matches at the end of the subject
also matches before a newline at the end of the subject
\z matches only at the end of the subject
\G matches at the first matching position in the subject
These assertions may not appear in character classes (but note that \b
has a different meaning, namely the backspace character, inside a
character class).
A word boundary is a position in the subject string where the current
character and the previous character do not both match \w or \W (i.e.
one matches \w and the other matches \W), or the start or end of the
string if the first or last character matches \w, respectively. Neither
PCRE nor Perl has a separte "start of word" or "end of word"
metasequence. However, whatever follows \b normally determines which it
is. For example, the fragment \ba matches "a" at the start of a word.
The \A, \Z, and \z assertions differ from the traditional circumflex
and dollar (described in the next section) in that they only ever match
at the very start and end of the subject string, whatever options are
set. Thus, they are independent of multiline mode. These three
assertions are not affected by the PCRE_NOTBOL or PCRE_NOTEOL options,
which affect only the behaviour of the circumflex and dollar
metacharacters. However, if the startoffset argument of pcre_exec() is
non-zero, indicating that matching is to start at a point other than
the beginning of the subject, \A can never match. The difference
between \Z and \z is that \Z matches before a newline at the end of the
string as well as at the very end, whereas \z matches only at the end.
The \G assertion is true only when the current matching position is at
the start point of the match, as specified by the startoffset argument
of pcre_exec(). It differs from \A when the value of startoffset is
non-zero. By calling pcre_exec() multiple times with appropriate
arguments, you can mimic Perl’s /g option, and it is in this kind of
implementation where \G can be useful.
Note, however, that PCRE’s interpretation of \G, as the start of the
current match, is subtly different from Perl’s, which defines it as the
end of the previous match. In Perl, these can be different when the
previously matched string was empty. Because PCRE does just one match
at a time, it cannot reproduce this behaviour.
If all the alternatives of a pattern begin with \G, the expression is
anchored to the starting match position, and the "anchored" flag is set
in the compiled regular expression.
CIRCUMFLEX AND DOLLAR
Outside a character class, in the default matching mode, the circumflex
character is an assertion that is true only if the current matching
point is at the start of the subject string. If the startoffset
argument of pcre_exec() is non-zero, circumflex can never match if the
PCRE_MULTILINE option is unset. Inside a character class, circumflex
has an entirely different meaning (see below).
Circumflex need not be the first character of the pattern if a number
of alternatives are involved, but it should be the first thing in each
alternative in which it appears if the pattern is ever to match that
branch. If all possible alternatives start with a circumflex, that is,
if the pattern is constrained to match only at the start of the
subject, it is said to be an "anchored" pattern. (There are also other
constructs that can cause a pattern to be anchored.)
A dollar character is an assertion that is true only if the current
matching point is at the end of the subject string, or immediately
before a newline at the end of the string (by default). Dollar need not
be the last character of the pattern if a number of alternatives are
involved, but it should be the last item in any branch in which it
appears. Dollar has no special meaning in a character class.
The meaning of dollar can be changed so that it matches only at the
very end of the string, by setting the PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY option at
compile time. This does not affect the \Z assertion.
The meanings of the circumflex and dollar characters are changed if the
PCRE_MULTILINE option is set. When this is the case, a circumflex
matches immediately after internal newlines as well as at the start of
the subject string. It does not match after a newline that ends the
string. A dollar matches before any newlines in the string, as well as
at the very end, when PCRE_MULTILINE is set. When newline is specified
as the two-character sequence CRLF, isolated CR and LF characters do
not indicate newlines.
For example, the pattern /^abc$/ matches the subject string "def\nabc"
(where \n represents a newline) in multiline mode, but not otherwise.
Consequently, patterns that are anchored in single line mode because
all branches start with ^ are not anchored in multiline mode, and a
match for circumflex is possible when the startoffset argument of
pcre_exec() is non-zero. The PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY option is ignored if
PCRE_MULTILINE is set.
Note that the sequences \A, \Z, and \z can be used to match the start
and end of the subject in both modes, and if all branches of a pattern
start with \A it is always anchored, whether or not PCRE_MULTILINE is
set.
FULL STOP (PERIOD, DOT)
Outside a character class, a dot in the pattern matches any one
character in the subject string except (by default) a character that
signifies the end of a line. In UTF-8 mode, the matched character may
be more than one byte long.
When a line ending is defined as a single character, dot never matches
that character; when the two-character sequence CRLF is used, dot does
not match CR if it is immediately followed by LF, but otherwise it
matches all characters (including isolated CRs and LFs). When any
Unicode line endings are being recognized, dot does not match CR or LF
or any of the other line ending characters.
The behaviour of dot with regard to newlines can be changed. If the
PCRE_DOTALL option is set, a dot matches any one character, without
exception. If the two-character sequence CRLF is present in the subject
string, it takes two dots to match it.
The handling of dot is entirely independent of the handling of
circumflex and dollar, the only relationship being that they both
involve newlines. Dot has no special meaning in a character class.
MATCHING A SINGLE BYTE
Outside a character class, the escape sequence \C matches any one byte,
both in and out of UTF-8 mode. Unlike a dot, it always matches any
line-ending characters. The feature is provided in Perl in order to
match individual bytes in UTF-8 mode. Because it breaks up UTF-8
characters into individual bytes, what remains in the string may be a
malformed UTF-8 string. For this reason, the \C escape sequence is best
avoided.
PCRE does not allow \C to appear in lookbehind assertions (described
below), because in UTF-8 mode this would make it impossible to
calculate the length of the lookbehind.
SQUARE BRACKETS AND CHARACTER CLASSES
An opening square bracket introduces a character class, terminated by a
closing square bracket. A closing square bracket on its own is not
special by default. However, if the PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT option is
set, a lone closing square bracket causes a compile-time error. If a
closing square bracket is required as a member of the class, it should
be the first data character in the class (after an initial circumflex,
if present) or escaped with a backslash.
A character class matches a single character in the subject. In UTF-8
mode, the character may be more than one byte long. A matched character
must be in the set of characters defined by the class, unless the first
character in the class definition is a circumflex, in which case the
subject character must not be in the set defined by the class. If a
circumflex is actually required as a member of the class, ensure it is
not the first character, or escape it with a backslash.
For example, the character class [aeiou] matches any lower case vowel,
while [^aeiou] matches any character that is not a lower case vowel.
Note that a circumflex is just a convenient notation for specifying the
characters that are in the class by enumerating those that are not. A
class that starts with a circumflex is not an assertion; it still
consumes a character from the subject string, and therefore it fails if
the current pointer is at the end of the string.
In UTF-8 mode, characters with values greater than 255 can be included
in a class as a literal string of bytes, or by using the \x{ escaping
mechanism.
When caseless matching is set, any letters in a class represent both
their upper case and lower case versions, so for example, a caseless
[aeiou] matches "A" as well as "a", and a caseless [^aeiou] does not
match "A", whereas a caseful version would. In UTF-8 mode, PCRE always
understands the concept of case for characters whose values are less
than 128, so caseless matching is always possible. For characters with
higher values, the concept of case is supported if PCRE is compiled
with Unicode property support, but not otherwise. If you want to use
caseless matching in UTF8-mode for characters 128 and above, you must
ensure that PCRE is compiled with Unicode property support as well as
with UTF-8 support.
Characters that might indicate line breaks are never treated in any
special way when matching character classes, whatever line-ending
sequence is in use, and whatever setting of the PCRE_DOTALL and
PCRE_MULTILINE options is used. A class such as [^a] always matches one
of these characters.
The minus (hyphen) character can be used to specify a range of
characters in a character class. For example, [d-m] matches any letter
between d and m, inclusive. If a minus character is required in a
class, it must be escaped with a backslash or appear in a position
where it cannot be interpreted as indicating a range, typically as the
first or last character in the class.
It is not possible to have the literal character "]" as the end
character of a range. A pattern such as [W-]46] is interpreted as a
class of two characters ("W" and "-") followed by a literal string
"46]", so it would match "W46]" or "-46]". However, if the "]" is
escaped with a backslash it is interpreted as the end of range, so
[W-\]46] is interpreted as a class containing a range followed by two
other characters. The octal or hexadecimal representation of "]" can
also be used to end a range.
Ranges operate in the collating sequence of character values. They can
also be used for characters specified numerically, for example
[\000-\037]. In UTF-8 mode, ranges can include characters whose values
are greater than 255, for example [\x{100}-\x{2ff}].
If a range that includes letters is used when caseless matching is set,
it matches the letters in either case. For example, [W-c] is equivalent
to [][\\^_‘wxyzabc], matched caselessly, and in non-UTF-8 mode, if
character tables for a French locale are in use, [\xc8-\xcb] matches
accented E characters in both cases. In UTF-8 mode, PCRE supports the
concept of case for characters with values greater than 128 only when
it is compiled with Unicode property support.
The character types \d, \D, \p, \P, \s, \S, \w, and \W may also appear
in a character class, and add the characters that they match to the
class. For example, [\dABCDEF] matches any hexadecimal digit. A
circumflex can conveniently be used with the upper case character types
to specify a more restricted set of characters than the matching lower
case type. For example, the class [^\W_] matches any letter or digit,
but not underscore.
The only metacharacters that are recognized in character classes are
backslash, hyphen (only where it can be interpreted as specifying a
range), circumflex (only at the start), opening square bracket (only
when it can be interpreted as introducing a POSIX class name - see the
next section), and the terminating closing square bracket. However,
escaping other non-alphanumeric characters does no harm.
POSIX CHARACTER CLASSES
Perl supports the POSIX notation for character classes. This uses names
enclosed by [: and :] within the enclosing square brackets. PCRE also
supports this notation. For example,
[01[:alpha:]%]
matches "0", "1", any alphabetic character, or "%". The supported class
names are
alnum letters and digits
alpha letters
ascii character codes 0 - 127
blank space or tab only
cntrl control characters
digit decimal digits (same as \d)
graph printing characters, excluding space
lower lower case letters
print printing characters, including space
punct printing characters, excluding letters and digits
space white space (not quite the same as \s)
upper upper case letters
word "word" characters (same as \w)
xdigit hexadecimal digits
The "space" characters are HT (9), LF (10), VT (11), FF (12), CR (13),
and space (32). Notice that this list includes the VT character (code
11). This makes "space" different to \s, which does not include VT (for
Perl compatibility).
The name "word" is a Perl extension, and "blank" is a GNU extension
from Perl 5.8. Another Perl extension is negation, which is indicated
by a ^ character after the colon. For example,
[12[:^digit:]]
matches "1", "2", or any non-digit. PCRE (and Perl) also recognize the
POSIX syntax [.ch.] and [=ch=] where "ch" is a "collating element", but
these are not supported, and an error is given if they are encountered.
In UTF-8 mode, characters with values greater than 128 do not match any
of the POSIX character classes.
VERTICAL BAR
Vertical bar characters are used to separate alternative patterns. For
example, the pattern
gilbert|sullivan
matches either "gilbert" or "sullivan". Any number of alternatives may
appear, and an empty alternative is permitted (matching the empty
string). The matching process tries each alternative in turn, from left
to right, and the first one that succeeds is used. If the alternatives
are within a subpattern (defined below), "succeeds" means matching the
rest of the main pattern as well as the alternative in the subpattern.
INTERNAL OPTION SETTING
The settings of the PCRE_CASELESS, PCRE_MULTILINE, PCRE_DOTALL, and
PCRE_EXTENDED options (which are Perl-compatible) can be changed from
within the pattern by a sequence of Perl option letters enclosed
between "(?" and ")". The option letters are
i for PCRE_CASELESS
m for PCRE_MULTILINE
s for PCRE_DOTALL
x for PCRE_EXTENDED
For example, (?im) sets caseless, multiline matching. It is also
possible to unset these options by preceding the letter with a hyphen,
and a combined setting and unsetting such as (?im-sx), which sets
PCRE_CASELESS and PCRE_MULTILINE while unsetting PCRE_DOTALL and
PCRE_EXTENDED, is also permitted. If a letter appears both before and
after the hyphen, the option is unset.
The PCRE-specific options PCRE_DUPNAMES, PCRE_UNGREEDY, and PCRE_EXTRA
can be changed in the same way as the Perl-compatible options by using
the characters J, U and X respectively.
When one of these option changes occurs at top level (that is, not
inside subpattern parentheses), the change applies to the remainder of
the pattern that follows. If the change is placed right at the start of
a pattern, PCRE extracts it into the global options (and it will
therefore show up in data extracted by the pcre_fullinfo() function).
An option change within a subpattern (see below for a description of
subpatterns) affects only that part of the current pattern that follows
it, so
(a(?i)b)c
matches abc and aBc and no other strings (assuming PCRE_CASELESS is not
used). By this means, options can be made to have different settings
in different parts of the pattern. Any changes made in one alternative
do carry on into subsequent branches within the same subpattern. For
example,
(a(?i)b|c)
matches "ab", "aB", "c", and "C", even though when matching "C" the
first branch is abandoned before the option setting. This is because
the effects of option settings happen at compile time. There would be
some very weird behaviour otherwise.
Note: There are other PCRE-specific options that can be set by the
application when the compile or match functions are called. In some
cases the pattern can contain special leading sequences such as (*CRLF)
to override what the application has set or what has been defaulted.
Details are given in the section entitled "Newline sequences" above.
There is also the (*UTF8) leading sequence that can be used to set
UTF-8 mode; this is equivalent to setting the PCRE_UTF8 option.
SUBPATTERNS
Subpatterns are delimited by parentheses (round brackets), which can be
nested. Turning part of a pattern into a subpattern does two things:
1. It localizes a set of alternatives. For example, the pattern
cat(aract|erpillar|)
matches one of the words "cat", "cataract", or "caterpillar". Without
the parentheses, it would match "cataract", "erpillar" or an empty
string.
2. It sets up the subpattern as a capturing subpattern. This means
that, when the whole pattern matches, that portion of the subject
string that matched the subpattern is passed back to the caller via the
ovector argument of pcre_exec(). Opening parentheses are counted from
left to right (starting from 1) to obtain numbers for the capturing
subpatterns.
For example, if the string "the red king" is matched against the
pattern
the ((red|white) (king|queen))
the captured substrings are "red king", "red", and "king", and are
numbered 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
The fact that plain parentheses fulfil two functions is not always
helpful. There are often times when a grouping subpattern is required
without a capturing requirement. If an opening parenthesis is followed
by a question mark and a colon, the subpattern does not do any
capturing, and is not counted when computing the number of any
subsequent capturing subpatterns. For example, if the string "the white
queen" is matched against the pattern
the ((?:red|white) (king|queen))
the captured substrings are "white queen" and "queen", and are numbered
1 and 2. The maximum number of capturing subpatterns is 65535.
As a convenient shorthand, if any option settings are required at the
start of a non-capturing subpattern, the option letters may appear
between the "?" and the ":". Thus the two patterns
(?i:saturday|sunday)
(?:(?i)saturday|sunday)
match exactly the same set of strings. Because alternative branches are
tried from left to right, and options are not reset until the end of
the subpattern is reached, an option setting in one branch does affect
subsequent branches, so the above patterns match "SUNDAY" as well as
"Saturday".
DUPLICATE SUBPATTERN NUMBERS
Perl 5.10 introduced a feature whereby each alternative in a subpattern
uses the same numbers for its capturing parentheses. Such a subpattern
starts with (?| and is itself a non-capturing subpattern. For example,
consider this pattern:
(?|(Sat)ur|(Sun))day
Because the two alternatives are inside a (?| group, both sets of
capturing parentheses are numbered one. Thus, when the pattern matches,
you can look at captured substring number one, whichever alternative
matched. This construct is useful when you want to capture part, but
not all, of one of a number of alternatives. Inside a (?| group,
parentheses are numbered as usual, but the number is reset at the start
of each branch. The numbers of any capturing buffers that follow the
subpattern start after the highest number used in any branch. The
following example is taken from the Perl documentation. The numbers
underneath show in which buffer the captured content will be stored.
# before ---------------branch-reset----------- after
/ ( a ) (?| x ( y ) z | (p (q) r) | (t) u (v) ) ( z ) /x
# 1 2 2 3 2 3 4
A back reference to a numbered subpattern uses the most recent value
that is set for that number by any subpattern. The following pattern
matches "abcabc" or "defdef":
/(?|(abc)|(def))\1/
In contrast, a recursive or "subroutine" call to a numbered subpattern
always refers to the first one in the pattern with the given number.
The following pattern matches "abcabc" or "defabc":
/(?|(abc)|(def))(?1)/
If a condition test for a subpattern’s having matched refers to a non-
unique number, the test is true if any of the subpatterns of that
number have matched.
An alternative approach to using this "branch reset" feature is to use
duplicate named subpatterns, as described in the next section.
NAMED SUBPATTERNS
Identifying capturing parentheses by number is simple, but it can be
very hard to keep track of the numbers in complicated regular
expressions. Furthermore, if an expression is modified, the numbers may
change. To help with this difficulty, PCRE supports the naming of
subpatterns. This feature was not added to Perl until release 5.10.
Python had the feature earlier, and PCRE introduced it at release 4.0,
using the Python syntax. PCRE now supports both the Perl and the Python
syntax. Perl allows identically numbered subpatterns to have different
names, but PCRE does not.
In PCRE, a subpattern can be named in one of three ways: (?<name>...)
or (?’name’...) as in Perl, or (?P<name>...) as in Python. References
to capturing parentheses from other parts of the pattern, such as back
references, recursion, and conditions, can be made by name as well as
by number.
Names consist of up to 32 alphanumeric characters and underscores.
Named capturing parentheses are still allocated numbers as well as
names, exactly as if the names were not present. The PCRE API provides
function calls for extracting the name-to-number translation table from
a compiled pattern. There is also a convenience function for extracting
a captured substring by name.
By default, a name must be unique within a pattern, but it is possible
to relax this constraint by setting the PCRE_DUPNAMES option at compile
time. (Duplicate names are also always permitted for subpatterns with
the same number, set up as described in the previous section.)
Duplicate names can be useful for patterns where only one instance of
the named parentheses can match. Suppose you want to match the name of
a weekday, either as a 3-letter abbreviation or as the full name, and
in both cases you want to extract the abbreviation. This pattern
(ignoring the line breaks) does the job:
(?<DN>Mon|Fri|Sun)(?:day)?|
(?<DN>Tue)(?:sday)?|
(?<DN>Wed)(?:nesday)?|
(?<DN>Thu)(?:rsday)?|
(?<DN>Sat)(?:urday)?
There are five capturing substrings, but only one is ever set after a
match. (An alternative way of solving this problem is to use a "branch
reset" subpattern, as described in the previous section.)
The convenience function for extracting the data by name returns the
substring for the first (and in this example, the only) subpattern of
that name that matched. This saves searching to find which numbered
subpattern it was.
If you make a back reference to a non-unique named subpattern from
elsewhere in the pattern, the one that corresponds to the first
occurrence of the name is used. In the absence of duplicate numbers
(see the previous section) this is the one with the lowest number. If
you use a named reference in a condition test (see the section about
conditions below), either to check whether a subpattern has matched, or
to check for recursion, all subpatterns with the same name are tested.
If the condition is true for any one of them, the overall condition is
true. This is the same behaviour as testing by number. For further
details of the interfaces for handling named subpatterns, see the
pcreapi documentation.
Warning: You cannot use different names to distinguish between two
subpatterns with the same number because PCRE uses only the numbers
when matching. For this reason, an error is given at compile time if
different names are given to subpatterns with the same number. However,
you can give the same name to subpatterns with the same number, even
when PCRE_DUPNAMES is not set.
REPETITION
Repetition is specified by quantifiers, which can follow any of the
following items:
a literal data character
the dot metacharacter
the \C escape sequence
the \X escape sequence (in UTF-8 mode with Unicode properties)
the \R escape sequence
an escape such as \d that matches a single character
a character class
a back reference (see next section)
a parenthesized subpattern (unless it is an assertion)
a recursive or "subroutine" call to a subpattern
The general repetition quantifier specifies a minimum and maximum
number of permitted matches, by giving the two numbers in curly
brackets (braces), separated by a comma. The numbers must be less than
65536, and the first must be less than or equal to the second. For
example:
z{2,4}
matches "zz", "zzz", or "zzzz". A closing brace on its own is not a
special character. If the second number is omitted, but the comma is
present, there is no upper limit; if the second number and the comma
are both omitted, the quantifier specifies an exact number of required
matches. Thus
[aeiou]{3,}
matches at least 3 successive vowels, but may match many more, while
\d{8}
matches exactly 8 digits. An opening curly bracket that appears in a
position where a quantifier is not allowed, or one that does not match
the syntax of a quantifier, is taken as a literal character. For
example, {,6} is not a quantifier, but a literal string of four
characters.
In UTF-8 mode, quantifiers apply to UTF-8 characters rather than to
individual bytes. Thus, for example, \x{100}{2} matches two UTF-8
characters, each of which is represented by a two-byte sequence.
Similarly, when Unicode property support is available, \X{3} matches
three Unicode extended sequences, each of which may be several bytes
long (and they may be of different lengths).
The quantifier {0} is permitted, causing the expression to behave as if
the previous item and the quantifier were not present. This may be
useful for subpatterns that are referenced as subroutines from
elsewhere in the pattern. Items other than subpatterns that have a {0}
quantifier are omitted from the compiled pattern.
For convenience, the three most common quantifiers have single-
character abbreviations:
* is equivalent to {0,}
+ is equivalent to {1,}
? is equivalent to {0,1}
It is possible to construct infinite loops by following a subpattern
that can match no characters with a quantifier that has no upper limit,
for example:
(a?)*
Earlier versions of Perl and PCRE used to give an error at compile time
for such patterns. However, because there are cases where this can be
useful, such patterns are now accepted, but if any repetition of the
subpattern does in fact match no characters, the loop is forcibly
broken.
By default, the quantifiers are "greedy", that is, they match as much
as possible (up to the maximum number of permitted times), without
causing the rest of the pattern to fail. The classic example of where
this gives problems is in trying to match comments in C programs. These
appear between /* and */ and within the comment, individual * and /
characters may appear. An attempt to match C comments by applying the
pattern
/\*.*\*/
to the string
/* first comment */ not comment /* second comment */
fails, because it matches the entire string owing to the greediness of
the .* item.
However, if a quantifier is followed by a question mark, it ceases to
be greedy, and instead matches the minimum number of times possible, so
the pattern
/\*.*?\*/
does the right thing with the C comments. The meaning of the various
quantifiers is not otherwise changed, just the preferred number of
matches. Do not confuse this use of question mark with its use as a
quantifier in its own right. Because it has two uses, it can sometimes
appear doubled, as in
\d??\d
which matches one digit by preference, but can match two if that is the
only way the rest of the pattern matches.
If the PCRE_UNGREEDY option is set (an option that is not available in
Perl), the quantifiers are not greedy by default, but individual ones
can be made greedy by following them with a question mark. In other
words, it inverts the default behaviour.
When a parenthesized subpattern is quantified with a minimum repeat
count that is greater than 1 or with a limited maximum, more memory is
required for the compiled pattern, in proportion to the size of the
minimum or maximum.
If a pattern starts with .* or .{0,} and the PCRE_DOTALL option
(equivalent to Perl’s /s) is set, thus allowing the dot to match
newlines, the pattern is implicitly anchored, because whatever follows
will be tried against every character position in the subject string,
so there is no point in retrying the overall match at any position
after the first. PCRE normally treats such a pattern as though it were
preceded by \A.
In cases where it is known that the subject string contains no
newlines, it is worth setting PCRE_DOTALL in order to obtain this
optimization, or alternatively using ^ to indicate anchoring
explicitly.
However, there is one situation where the optimization cannot be used.
When .* is inside capturing parentheses that are the subject of a back
reference elsewhere in the pattern, a match at the start may fail where
a later one succeeds. Consider, for example:
(.*)abc\1
If the subject is "xyz123abc123" the match point is the fourth
character. For this reason, such a pattern is not implicitly anchored.
When a capturing subpattern is repeated, the value captured is the
substring that matched the final iteration. For example, after
(tweedle[dume]{3}\s*)+
has matched "tweedledum tweedledee" the value of the captured substring
is "tweedledee". However, if there are nested capturing subpatterns,
the corresponding captured values may have been set in previous
iterations. For example, after
/(a|(b))+/
matches "aba" the value of the second captured substring is "b".
ATOMIC GROUPING AND POSSESSIVE QUANTIFIERS
With both maximizing ("greedy") and minimizing ("ungreedy" or "lazy")
repetition, failure of what follows normally causes the repeated item
to be re-evaluated to see if a different number of repeats allows the
rest of the pattern to match. Sometimes it is useful to prevent this,
either to change the nature of the match, or to cause it fail earlier
than it otherwise might, when the author of the pattern knows there is
no point in carrying on.
Consider, for example, the pattern \d+foo when applied to the subject
line
123456bar
After matching all 6 digits and then failing to match "foo", the normal
action of the matcher is to try again with only 5 digits matching the
\d+ item, and then with 4, and so on, before ultimately failing.
"Atomic grouping" (a term taken from Jeffrey Friedl’s book) provides
the means for specifying that once a subpattern has matched, it is not
to be re-evaluated in this way.
If we use atomic grouping for the previous example, the matcher gives
up immediately on failing to match "foo" the first time. The notation
is a kind of special parenthesis, starting with (?> as in this example:
(?>\d+)foo
This kind of parenthesis "locks up" the part of the pattern it
contains once it has matched, and a failure further into the pattern is
prevented from backtracking into it. Backtracking past it to previous
items, however, works as normal.
An alternative description is that a subpattern of this type matches
the string of characters that an identical standalone pattern would
match, if anchored at the current point in the subject string.
Atomic grouping subpatterns are not capturing subpatterns. Simple cases
such as the above example can be thought of as a maximizing repeat that
must swallow everything it can. So, while both \d+ and \d+? are
prepared to adjust the number of digits they match in order to make the
rest of the pattern match, (?>\d+) can only match an entire sequence of
digits.
Atomic groups in general can of course contain arbitrarily complicated
subpatterns, and can be nested. However, when the subpattern for an
atomic group is just a single repeated item, as in the example above, a
simpler notation, called a "possessive quantifier" can be used. This
consists of an additional + character following a quantifier. Using
this notation, the previous example can be rewritten as
\d++foo
Note that a possessive quantifier can be used with an entire group, for
example:
(abc|xyz){2,3}+
Possessive quantifiers are always greedy; the setting of the
PCRE_UNGREEDY option is ignored. They are a convenient notation for the
simpler forms of atomic group. However, there is no difference in the
meaning of a possessive quantifier and the equivalent atomic group,
though there may be a performance difference; possessive quantifiers
should be slightly faster.
The possessive quantifier syntax is an extension to the Perl 5.8
syntax. Jeffrey Friedl originated the idea (and the name) in the first
edition of his book. Mike McCloskey liked it, so implemented it when he
built Sun’s Java package, and PCRE copied it from there. It ultimately
found its way into Perl at release 5.10.
PCRE has an optimization that automatically "possessifies" certain
simple pattern constructs. For example, the sequence A+B is treated as
A++B because there is no point in backtracking into a sequence of A’s
when B must follow.
When a pattern contains an unlimited repeat inside a subpattern that
can itself be repeated an unlimited number of times, the use of an
atomic group is the only way to avoid some failing matches taking a
very long time indeed. The pattern
(\D+|<\d+>)*[!?]
matches an unlimited number of substrings that either consist of non-
digits, or digits enclosed in <>, followed by either ! or ?. When it
matches, it runs quickly. However, if it is applied to
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
it takes a long time before reporting failure. This is because the
string can be divided between the internal \D+ repeat and the external
* repeat in a large number of ways, and all have to be tried. (The
example uses [!?] rather than a single character at the end, because
both PCRE and Perl have an optimization that allows for fast failure
when a single character is used. They remember the last single
character that is required for a match, and fail early if it is not
present in the string.) If the pattern is changed so that it uses an
atomic group, like this:
((?>\D+)|<\d+>)*[!?]
sequences of non-digits cannot be broken, and failure happens quickly.
BACK REFERENCES
Outside a character class, a backslash followed by a digit greater than
0 (and possibly further digits) is a back reference to a capturing
subpattern earlier (that is, to its left) in the pattern, provided
there have been that many previous capturing left parentheses.
However, if the decimal number following the backslash is less than 10,
it is always taken as a back reference, and causes an error only if
there are not that many capturing left parentheses in the entire
pattern. In other words, the parentheses that are referenced need not
be to the left of the reference for numbers less than 10. A "forward
back reference" of this type can make sense when a repetition is
involved and the subpattern to the right has participated in an earlier
iteration.
It is not possible to have a numerical "forward back reference" to a
subpattern whose number is 10 or more using this syntax because a
sequence such as \50 is interpreted as a character defined in octal.
See the subsection entitled "Non-printing characters" above for further
details of the handling of digits following a backslash. There is no
such problem when named parentheses are used. A back reference to any
subpattern is possible using named parentheses (see below).
Another way of avoiding the ambiguity inherent in the use of digits
following a backslash is to use the \g escape sequence, which is a
feature introduced in Perl 5.10. This escape must be followed by an
unsigned number or a negative number, optionally enclosed in braces.
These examples are all identical:
(ring), \1
(ring), \g1
(ring), \g{1}
An unsigned number specifies an absolute reference without the
ambiguity that is present in the older syntax. It is also useful when
literal digits follow the reference. A negative number is a relative
reference. Consider this example:
(abc(def)ghi)\g{-1}
The sequence \g{-1} is a reference to the most recently started
capturing subpattern before \g, that is, is it equivalent to \2.
Similarly, \g{-2} would be equivalent to \1. The use of relative
references can be helpful in long patterns, and also in patterns that
are created by joining together fragments that contain references
within themselves.
A back reference matches whatever actually matched the capturing
subpattern in the current subject string, rather than anything matching
the subpattern itself (see "Subpatterns as subroutines" below for a way
of doing that). So the pattern
(sens|respons)e and \1ibility
matches "sense and sensibility" and "response and responsibility", but
not "sense and responsibility". If caseful matching is in force at the
time of the back reference, the case of letters is relevant. For
example,
((?i)rah)\s+\1
matches "rah rah" and "RAH RAH", but not "RAH rah", even though the
original capturing subpattern is matched caselessly.
There are several different ways of writing back references to named
subpatterns. The .NET syntax \k{name} and the Perl syntax \k<name> or
\k’name’ are supported, as is the Python syntax (?P=name). Perl 5.10’s
unified back reference syntax, in which \g can be used for both numeric
and named references, is also supported. We could rewrite the above
example in any of the following ways:
(?<p1>(?i)rah)\s+\k<p1>
(?’p1’(?i)rah)\s+\k{p1}
(?P<p1>(?i)rah)\s+(?P=p1)
(?<p1>(?i)rah)\s+\g{p1}
A subpattern that is referenced by name may appear in the pattern
before or after the reference.
There may be more than one back reference to the same subpattern. If a
subpattern has not actually been used in a particular match, any back
references to it always fail by default. For example, the pattern
(a|(bc))\2
always fails if it starts to match "a" rather than "bc". However, if
the PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT option is set at compile time, a back
reference to an unset value matches an empty string.
Because there may be many capturing parentheses in a pattern, all
digits following a backslash are taken as part of a potential back
reference number. If the pattern continues with a digit character,
some delimiter must be used to terminate the back reference. If the
PCRE_EXTENDED option is set, this can be whitespace. Otherwise, the \g{
syntax or an empty comment (see "Comments" below) can be used.
Recursive back references
A back reference that occurs inside the parentheses to which it refers
fails when the subpattern is first used, so, for example, (a\1) never
matches. However, such references can be useful inside repeated
subpatterns. For example, the pattern
(a|b\1)+
matches any number of "a"s and also "aba", "ababbaa" etc. At each
iteration of the subpattern, the back reference matches the character
string corresponding to the previous iteration. In order for this to
work, the pattern must be such that the first iteration does not need
to match the back reference. This can be done using alternation, as in
the example above, or by a quantifier with a minimum of zero.
Back references of this type cause the group that they reference to be
treated as an atomic group. Once the whole group has been matched, a
subsequent matching failure cannot cause backtracking into the middle
of the group.
ASSERTIONS
An assertion is a test on the characters following or preceding the
current matching point that does not actually consume any characters.
The simple assertions coded as \b, \B, \A, \G, \Z, \z, ^ and $ are
described above.
More complicated assertions are coded as subpatterns. There are two
kinds: those that look ahead of the current position in the subject
string, and those that look behind it. An assertion subpattern is
matched in the normal way, except that it does not cause the current
matching position to be changed.
Assertion subpatterns are not capturing subpatterns, and may not be
repeated, because it makes no sense to assert the same thing several
times. If any kind of assertion contains capturing subpatterns within
it, these are counted for the purposes of numbering the capturing
subpatterns in the whole pattern. However, substring capturing is
carried out only for positive assertions, because it does not make
sense for negative assertions.
Lookahead assertions
Lookahead assertions start with (?= for positive assertions and (?! for
negative assertions. For example,
\w+(?=;)
matches a word followed by a semicolon, but does not include the
semicolon in the match, and
foo(?!bar)
matches any occurrence of "foo" that is not followed by "bar". Note
that the apparently similar pattern
(?!foo)bar
does not find an occurrence of "bar" that is preceded by something
other than "foo"; it finds any occurrence of "bar" whatsoever, because
the assertion (?!foo) is always true when the next three characters are
"bar". A lookbehind assertion is needed to achieve the other effect.
If you want to force a matching failure at some point in a pattern, the
most convenient way to do it is with (?!) because an empty string
always matches, so an assertion that requires there not to be an empty
string must always fail. The Perl 5.10 backtracking control verb
(*FAIL) or (*F) is essentially a synonym for (?!).
Lookbehind assertions
Lookbehind assertions start with (?<= for positive assertions and (?<!
for negative assertions. For example,
(?<!foo)bar
does find an occurrence of "bar" that is not preceded by "foo". The
contents of a lookbehind assertion are restricted such that all the
strings it matches must have a fixed length. However, if there are
several top-level alternatives, they do not all have to have the same
fixed length. Thus
(?<=bullock|donkey)
is permitted, but
(?<!dogs?|cats?)
causes an error at compile time. Branches that match different length
strings are permitted only at the top level of a lookbehind assertion.
This is an extension compared with Perl (5.8 and 5.10), which requires
all branches to match the same length of string. An assertion such as
(?<=ab(c|de))
is not permitted, because its single top-level branch can match two
different lengths, but it is acceptable to PCRE if rewritten to use two
top-level branches:
(?<=abc|abde)
In some cases, the Perl 5.10 escape sequence \K (see above) can be used
instead of a lookbehind assertion to get round the fixed-length
restriction.
The implementation of lookbehind assertions is, for each alternative,
to temporarily move the current position back by the fixed length and
then try to match. If there are insufficient characters before the
current position, the assertion fails.
PCRE does not allow the \C escape (which matches a single byte in UTF-8
mode) to appear in lookbehind assertions, because it makes it
impossible to calculate the length of the lookbehind. The \X and \R
escapes, which can match different numbers of bytes, are also not
permitted.
"Subroutine" calls (see below) such as (?2) or (?&X) are permitted in
lookbehinds, as long as the subpattern matches a fixed-length string.
Recursion, however, is not supported.
Possessive quantifiers can be used in conjunction with lookbehind
assertions to specify efficient matching of fixed-length strings at the
end of subject strings. Consider a simple pattern such as
abcd$
when applied to a long string that does not match. Because matching
proceeds from left to right, PCRE will look for each "a" in the subject
and then see if what follows matches the rest of the pattern. If the
pattern is specified as
^.*abcd$
the initial .* matches the entire string at first, but when this fails
(because there is no following "a"), it backtracks to match all but the
last character, then all but the last two characters, and so on. Once
again the search for "a" covers the entire string, from right to left,
so we are no better off. However, if the pattern is written as
^.*+(?<=abcd)
there can be no backtracking for the .*+ item; it can match only the
entire string. The subsequent lookbehind assertion does a single test
on the last four characters. If it fails, the match fails immediately.
For long strings, this approach makes a significant difference to the
processing time.
Using multiple assertions
Several assertions (of any sort) may occur in succession. For example,
(?<=\d{3})(?<!999)foo
matches "foo" preceded by three digits that are not "999". Notice that
each of the assertions is applied independently at the same point in
the subject string. First there is a check that the previous three
characters are all digits, and then there is a check that the same
three characters are not "999". This pattern does not match "foo"
preceded by six characters, the first of which are digits and the last
three of which are not "999". For example, it doesn’t match
"123abcfoo". A pattern to do that is
(?<=\d{3}...)(?<!999)foo
This time the first assertion looks at the preceding six characters,
checking that the first three are digits, and then the second assertion
checks that the preceding three characters are not "999".
Assertions can be nested in any combination. For example,
(?<=(?<!foo)bar)baz
matches an occurrence of "baz" that is preceded by "bar" which in turn
is not preceded by "foo", while
(?<=\d{3}(?!999)...)foo
is another pattern that matches "foo" preceded by three digits and any
three characters that are not "999".
CONDITIONAL SUBPATTERNS
It is possible to cause the matching process to obey a subpattern
conditionally or to choose between two alternative subpatterns,
depending on the result of an assertion, or whether a specific
capturing subpattern has already been matched. The two possible forms
of conditional subpattern are:
(?(condition)yes-pattern)
(?(condition)yes-pattern|no-pattern)
If the condition is satisfied, the yes-pattern is used; otherwise the
no-pattern (if present) is used. If there are more than two
alternatives in the subpattern, a compile-time error occurs.
There are four kinds of condition: references to subpatterns,
references to recursion, a pseudo-condition called DEFINE, and
assertions.
Checking for a used subpattern by number
If the text between the parentheses consists of a sequence of digits,
the condition is true if a capturing subpattern of that number has
previously matched. If there is more than one capturing subpattern with
the same number (see the earlier section about duplicate subpattern
numbers), the condition is true if any of them have been set. An
alternative notation is to precede the digits with a plus or minus
sign. In this case, the subpattern number is relative rather than
absolute. The most recently opened parentheses can be referenced by
(?(-1), the next most recent by (?(-2), and so on. In looping
constructs it can also make sense to refer to subsequent groups with
constructs such as (?(+2).
Consider the following pattern, which contains non-significant white
space to make it more readable (assume the PCRE_EXTENDED option) and to
divide it into three parts for ease of discussion:
( \( )? [^()]+ (?(1) \) )
The first part matches an optional opening parenthesis, and if that
character is present, sets it as the first captured substring. The
second part matches one or more characters that are not parentheses.
The third part is a conditional subpattern that tests whether the first
set of parentheses matched or not. If they did, that is, if subject
started with an opening parenthesis, the condition is true, and so the
yes-pattern is executed and a closing parenthesis is required.
Otherwise, since no-pattern is not present, the subpattern matches
nothing. In other words, this pattern matches a sequence of non-
parentheses, optionally enclosed in parentheses.
If you were embedding this pattern in a larger one, you could use a
relative reference:
...other stuff... ( \( )? [^()]+ (?(-1) \) ) ...
This makes the fragment independent of the parentheses in the larger
pattern.
Checking for a used subpattern by name
Perl uses the syntax (?(<name>)...) or (?(’name’)...) to test for a
used subpattern by name. For compatibility with earlier versions of
PCRE, which had this facility before Perl, the syntax (?(name)...) is
also recognized. However, there is a possible ambiguity with this
syntax, because subpattern names may consist entirely of digits. PCRE
looks first for a named subpattern; if it cannot find one and the name
consists entirely of digits, PCRE looks for a subpattern of that
number, which must be greater than zero. Using subpattern names that
consist entirely of digits is not recommended.
Rewriting the above example to use a named subpattern gives this:
(?<OPEN> \( )? [^()]+ (?(<OPEN>) \) )
If the name used in a condition of this kind is a duplicate, the test
is applied to all subpatterns of the same name, and is true if any one
of them has matched.
Checking for pattern recursion
If the condition is the string (R), and there is no subpattern with the
name R, the condition is true if a recursive call to the whole pattern
or any subpattern has been made. If digits or a name preceded by
ampersand follow the letter R, for example:
(?(R3)...) or (?(R&name)...)
the condition is true if the most recent recursion is into a subpattern
whose number or name is given. This condition does not check the entire
recursion stack. If the name used in a condition of this kind is a
duplicate, the test is applied to all subpatterns of the same name, and
is true if any one of them is the most recent recursion.
At "top level", all these recursion test conditions are false. The
syntax for recursive patterns is described below.
Defining subpatterns for use by reference only
If the condition is the string (DEFINE), and there is no subpattern
with the name DEFINE, the condition is always false. In this case,
there may be only one alternative in the subpattern. It is always
skipped if control reaches this point in the pattern; the idea of
DEFINE is that it can be used to define "subroutines" that can be
referenced from elsewhere. (The use of "subroutines" is described
below.) For example, a pattern to match an IPv4 address could be
written like this (ignore whitespace and line breaks):
(?(DEFINE) (?<byte> 2[0-4]\d | 25[0-5] | 1\d\d | [1-9]?\d) )
\b (?&byte) (\.(?&byte)){3} \b
The first part of the pattern is a DEFINE group inside which a another
group named "byte" is defined. This matches an individual component of
an IPv4 address (a number less than 256). When matching takes place,
this part of the pattern is skipped because DEFINE acts like a false
condition. The rest of the pattern uses references to the named group
to match the four dot-separated components of an IPv4 address,
insisting on a word boundary at each end.
Assertion conditions
If the condition is not in any of the above formats, it must be an
assertion. This may be a positive or negative lookahead or lookbehind
assertion. Consider this pattern, again containing non-significant
white space, and with the two alternatives on the second line:
(?(?=[^a-z]*[a-z])
\d{2}-[a-z]{3}-\d{2} | \d{2}-\d{2}-\d{2} )
The condition is a positive lookahead assertion that matches an
optional sequence of non-letters followed by a letter. In other words,
it tests for the presence of at least one letter in the subject. If a
letter is found, the subject is matched against the first alternative;
otherwise it is matched against the second. This pattern matches
strings in one of the two forms dd-aaa-dd or dd-dd-dd, where aaa are
letters and dd are digits.
COMMENTS
The sequence (?# marks the start of a comment that continues up to the
next closing parenthesis. Nested parentheses are not permitted. The
characters that make up a comment play no part in the pattern matching
at all.
If the PCRE_EXTENDED option is set, an unescaped # character outside a
character class introduces a comment that continues to immediately
after the next newline in the pattern.
RECURSIVE PATTERNS
Consider the problem of matching a string in parentheses, allowing for
unlimited nested parentheses. Without the use of recursion, the best
that can be done is to use a pattern that matches up to some fixed
depth of nesting. It is not possible to handle an arbitrary nesting
depth.
For some time, Perl has provided a facility that allows regular
expressions to recurse (amongst other things). It does this by
interpolating Perl code in the expression at run time, and the code can
refer to the expression itself. A Perl pattern using code interpolation
to solve the parentheses problem can be created like this:
$re = qr{\( (?: (?>[^()]+) | (?p{$re}) )* \)}x;
The (?p{...}) item interpolates Perl code at run time, and in this case
refers recursively to the pattern in which it appears.
Obviously, PCRE cannot support the interpolation of Perl code. Instead,
it supports special syntax for recursion of the entire pattern, and
also for individual subpattern recursion. After its introduction in
PCRE and Python, this kind of recursion was subsequently introduced
into Perl at release 5.10.
A special item that consists of (? followed by a number greater than
zero and a closing parenthesis is a recursive call of the subpattern of
the given number, provided that it occurs inside that subpattern. (If
not, it is a "subroutine" call, which is described in the next
section.) The special item (?R) or (?0) is a recursive call of the
entire regular expression.
This PCRE pattern solves the nested parentheses problem (assume the
PCRE_EXTENDED option is set so that white space is ignored):
\( ( [^()]++ | (?R) )* \)
First it matches an opening parenthesis. Then it matches any number of
substrings which can either be a sequence of non-parentheses, or a
recursive match of the pattern itself (that is, a correctly
parenthesized substring). Finally there is a closing parenthesis. Note
the use of a possessive quantifier to avoid backtracking into sequences
of non-parentheses.
If this were part of a larger pattern, you would not want to recurse
the entire pattern, so instead you could use this:
( \( ( [^()]++ | (?1) )* \) )
We have put the pattern into parentheses, and caused the recursion to
refer to them instead of the whole pattern.
In a larger pattern, keeping track of parenthesis numbers can be
tricky. This is made easier by the use of relative references (a Perl
5.10 feature). Instead of (?1) in the pattern above you can write
(?-2) to refer to the second most recently opened parentheses preceding
the recursion. In other words, a negative number counts capturing
parentheses leftwards from the point at which it is encountered.
It is also possible to refer to subsequently opened parentheses, by
writing references such as (?+2). However, these cannot be recursive
because the reference is not inside the parentheses that are
referenced. They are always "subroutine" calls, as described in the
next section.
An alternative approach is to use named parentheses instead. The Perl
syntax for this is (?&name); PCRE’s earlier syntax (?P>name) is also
supported. We could rewrite the above example as follows:
(?<pn> \( ( [^()]++ | (?&pn) )* \) )
If there is more than one subpattern with the same name, the earliest
one is used.
This particular example pattern that we have been looking at contains
nested unlimited repeats, and so the use of a possessive quantifier for
matching strings of non-parentheses is important when applying the
pattern to strings that do not match. For example, when this pattern is
applied to
(aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa()
it yields "no match" quickly. However, if a possessive quantifier is
not used, the match runs for a very long time indeed because there are
so many different ways the + and * repeats can carve up the subject,
and all have to be tested before failure can be reported.
At the end of a match, the values of capturing parentheses are those
from the outermost level. If you want to obtain intermediate values, a
callout function can be used (see below and the pcrecallout
documentation). If the pattern above is matched against
(ab(cd)ef)
the value for the inner capturing parentheses (numbered 2) is "ef",
which is the last value taken on at the top level. If a capturing
subpattern is not matched at the top level, its final value is unset,
even if it is (temporarily) set at a deeper level.
If there are more than 15 capturing parentheses in a pattern, PCRE has
to obtain extra memory to store data during a recursion, which it does
by using pcre_malloc, freeing it via pcre_free afterwards. If no memory
can be obtained, the match fails with the PCRE_ERROR_NOMEMORY error.
Do not confuse the (?R) item with the condition (R), which tests for
recursion. Consider this pattern, which matches text in angle
brackets, allowing for arbitrary nesting. Only digits are allowed in
nested brackets (that is, when recursing), whereas any characters are
permitted at the outer level.
< (?: (?(R) \d++ | [^<>]*+) | (?R)) * >
In this pattern, (?(R) is the start of a conditional subpattern, with
two different alternatives for the recursive and non-recursive cases.
The (?R) item is the actual recursive call.
Recursion difference from Perl
In PCRE (like Python, but unlike Perl), a recursive subpattern call is
always treated as an atomic group. That is, once it has matched some of
the subject string, it is never re-entered, even if it contains untried
alternatives and there is a subsequent matching failure. This can be
illustrated by the following pattern, which purports to match a
palindromic string that contains an odd number of characters (for
example, "a", "aba", "abcba", "abcdcba"):
^(.|(.)(?1)\2)$
The idea is that it either matches a single character, or two identical
characters surrounding a sub-palindrome. In Perl, this pattern works;
in PCRE it does not if the pattern is longer than three characters.
Consider the subject string "abcba":
At the top level, the first character is matched, but as it is not at
the end of the string, the first alternative fails; the second
alternative is taken and the recursion kicks in. The recursive call to
subpattern 1 successfully matches the next character ("b"). (Note that
the beginning and end of line tests are not part of the recursion).
Back at the top level, the next character ("c") is compared with what
subpattern 2 matched, which was "a". This fails. Because the recursion
is treated as an atomic group, there are now no backtracking points,
and so the entire match fails. (Perl is able, at this point, to re-
enter the recursion and try the second alternative.) However, if the
pattern is written with the alternatives in the other order, things are
different:
^((.)(?1)\2|.)$
This time, the recursing alternative is tried first, and continues to
recurse until it runs out of characters, at which point the recursion
fails. But this time we do have another alternative to try at the
higher level. That is the big difference: in the previous case the
remaining alternative is at a deeper recursion level, which PCRE cannot
use.
To change the pattern so that matches all palindromic strings, not just
those with an odd number of characters, it is tempting to change the
pattern to this:
^((.)(?1)\2|.?)$
Again, this works in Perl, but not in PCRE, and for the same reason.
When a deeper recursion has matched a single character, it cannot be
entered again in order to match an empty string. The solution is to
separate the two cases, and write out the odd and even cases as
alternatives at the higher level:
^(?:((.)(?1)\2|)|((.)(?3)\4|.))
If you want to match typical palindromic phrases, the pattern has to
ignore all non-word characters, which can be done like this:
^\W*+(?:((.)\W*+(?1)\W*+\2|)|((.)\W*+(?3)\W*+\4|\W*+.\W*+))\W*+$
If run with the PCRE_CASELESS option, this pattern matches phrases such
as "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!" and it works well in both PCRE and
Perl. Note the use of the possessive quantifier *+ to avoid
backtracking into sequences of non-word characters. Without this, PCRE
takes a great deal longer (ten times or more) to match typical phrases,
and Perl takes so long that you think it has gone into a loop.
WARNING: The palindrome-matching patterns above work only if the
subject string does not start with a palindrome that is shorter than
the entire string. For example, although "abcba" is correctly matched,
if the subject is "ababa", PCRE finds the palindrome "aba" at the
start, then fails at top level because the end of the string does not
follow. Once again, it cannot jump back into the recursion to try other
alternatives, so the entire match fails.
SUBPATTERNS AS SUBROUTINES
If the syntax for a recursive subpattern reference (either by number or
by name) is used outside the parentheses to which it refers, it
operates like a subroutine in a programming language. The "called"
subpattern may be defined before or after the reference. A numbered
reference can be absolute or relative, as in these examples:
(...(absolute)...)...(?2)...
(...(relative)...)...(?-1)...
(...(?+1)...(relative)...
An earlier example pointed out that the pattern
(sens|respons)e and \1ibility
matches "sense and sensibility" and "response and responsibility", but
not "sense and responsibility". If instead the pattern
(sens|respons)e and (?1)ibility
is used, it does match "sense and responsibility" as well as the other
two strings. Another example is given in the discussion of DEFINE
above.
Like recursive subpatterns, a subroutine call is always treated as an
atomic group. That is, once it has matched some of the subject string,
it is never re-entered, even if it contains untried alternatives and
there is a subsequent matching failure. Any capturing parentheses that
are set during the subroutine call revert to their previous values
afterwards.
When a subpattern is used as a subroutine, processing options such as
case-independence are fixed when the subpattern is defined. They cannot
be changed for different calls. For example, consider this pattern:
(abc)(?i:(?-1))
It matches "abcabc". It does not match "abcABC" because the change of
processing option does not affect the called subpattern.
ONIGURUMA SUBROUTINE SYNTAX
For compatibility with Oniguruma, the non-Perl syntax \g followed by a
name or a number enclosed either in angle brackets or single quotes, is
an alternative syntax for referencing a subpattern as a subroutine,
possibly recursively. Here are two of the examples used above,
rewritten using this syntax:
(?<pn> \( ( (?>[^()]+) | \g<pn> )* \) )
(sens|respons)e and \g’1’ibility
PCRE supports an extension to Oniguruma: if a number is preceded by a
plus or a minus sign it is taken as a relative reference. For example:
(abc)(?i:\g<-1>)
Note that \g{...} (Perl syntax) and \g<...> (Oniguruma syntax) are not
synonymous. The former is a back reference; the latter is a subroutine
call.
CALLOUTS
Perl has a feature whereby using the sequence (?{...}) causes arbitrary
Perl code to be obeyed in the middle of matching a regular expression.
This makes it possible, amongst other things, to extract different
substrings that match the same pair of parentheses when there is a
repetition.
PCRE provides a similar feature, but of course it cannot obey arbitrary
Perl code. The feature is called "callout". The caller of PCRE provides
an external function by putting its entry point in the global variable
pcre_callout. By default, this variable contains NULL, which disables
all calling out.
Within a regular expression, (?C) indicates the points at which the
external function is to be called. If you want to identify different
callout points, you can put a number less than 256 after the letter C.
The default value is zero. For example, this pattern has two callout
points:
(?C1)abc(?C2)def
If the PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT flag is passed to pcre_compile(), callouts are
automatically installed before each item in the pattern. They are all
numbered 255.
During matching, when PCRE reaches a callout point (and pcre_callout is
set), the external function is called. It is provided with the number
of the callout, the position in the pattern, and, optionally, one item
of data originally supplied by the caller of pcre_exec(). The callout
function may cause matching to proceed, to backtrack, or to fail
altogether. A complete description of the interface to the callout
function is given in the pcrecallout documentation.
BACKTRACKING CONTROL
Perl 5.10 introduced a number of "Special Backtracking Control Verbs",
which are described in the Perl documentation as "experimental and
subject to change or removal in a future version of Perl". It goes on
to say: "Their usage in production code should be noted to avoid
problems during upgrades." The same remarks apply to the PCRE features
described in this section.
Since these verbs are specifically related to backtracking, most of
them can be used only when the pattern is to be matched using
pcre_exec(), which uses a backtracking algorithm. With the exception of
(*FAIL), which behaves like a failing negative assertion, they cause an
error if encountered by pcre_dfa_exec().
If any of these verbs are used in an assertion or subroutine subpattern
(including recursive subpatterns), their effect is confined to that
subpattern; it does not extend to the surrounding pattern. Note that
such subpatterns are processed as anchored at the point where they are
tested.
The new verbs make use of what was previously invalid syntax: an
opening parenthesis followed by an asterisk. In Perl, they are
generally of the form (*VERB:ARG) but PCRE does not support the use of
arguments, so its general form is just (*VERB). Any number of these
verbs may occur in a pattern. There are two kinds:
Verbs that act immediately
The following verbs act as soon as they are encountered:
(*ACCEPT)
This verb causes the match to end successfully, skipping the remainder
of the pattern. When inside a recursion, only the innermost pattern is
ended immediately. If (*ACCEPT) is inside capturing parentheses, the
data so far is captured. (This feature was added to PCRE at release
8.00.) For example:
A((?:A|B(*ACCEPT)|C)D)
This matches "AB", "AAD", or "ACD"; when it matches "AB", "B" is
captured by the outer parentheses.
(*FAIL) or (*F)
This verb causes the match to fail, forcing backtracking to occur. It
is equivalent to (?!) but easier to read. The Perl documentation notes
that it is probably useful only when combined with (?{}) or (??{}).
Those are, of course, Perl features that are not present in PCRE. The
nearest equivalent is the callout feature, as for example in this
pattern:
a+(?C)(*FAIL)
A match with the string "aaaa" always fails, but the callout is taken
before each backtrack happens (in this example, 10 times).
Verbs that act after backtracking
The following verbs do nothing when they are encountered. Matching
continues with what follows, but if there is no subsequent match, a
failure is forced. The verbs differ in exactly what kind of failure
occurs.
(*COMMIT)
This verb causes the whole match to fail outright if the rest of the
pattern does not match. Even if the pattern is unanchored, no further
attempts to find a match by advancing the starting point take place.
Once (*COMMIT) has been passed, pcre_exec() is committed to finding a
match at the current starting point, or not at all. For example:
a+(*COMMIT)b
This matches "xxaab" but not "aacaab". It can be thought of as a kind
of dynamic anchor, or "I’ve started, so I must finish."
(*PRUNE)
This verb causes the match to fail at the current position if the rest
of the pattern does not match. If the pattern is unanchored, the normal
"bumpalong" advance to the next starting character then happens.
Backtracking can occur as usual to the left of (*PRUNE), or when
matching to the right of (*PRUNE), but if there is no match to the
right, backtracking cannot cross (*PRUNE). In simple cases, the use of
(*PRUNE) is just an alternative to an atomic group or possessive
quantifier, but there are some uses of (*PRUNE) that cannot be
expressed in any other way.
(*SKIP)
This verb is like (*PRUNE), except that if the pattern is unanchored,
the "bumpalong" advance is not to the next character, but to the
position in the subject where (*SKIP) was encountered. (*SKIP)
signifies that whatever text was matched leading up to it cannot be
part of a successful match. Consider:
a+(*SKIP)b
If the subject is "aaaac...", after the first match attempt fails
(starting at the first character in the string), the starting point
skips on to start the next attempt at "c". Note that a possessive
quantifer does not have the same effect as this example; although it
would suppress backtracking during the first match attempt, the second
attempt would start at the second character instead of skipping on to
"c".
(*THEN)
This verb causes a skip to the next alternation if the rest of the
pattern does not match. That is, it cancels pending backtracking, but
only within the current alternation. Its name comes from the
observation that it can be used for a pattern-based if-then-else block:
( COND1 (*THEN) FOO | COND2 (*THEN) BAR | COND3 (*THEN) BAZ ) ...
If the COND1 pattern matches, FOO is tried (and possibly further items
after the end of the group if FOO succeeds); on failure the matcher
skips to the second alternative and tries COND2, without backtracking
into COND1. If (*THEN) is used outside of any alternation, it acts
exactly like (*PRUNE).
SEE ALSO
pcreapi(3), pcrecallout(3), pcrematching(3), pcresyntax(3), pcre(3).
AUTHOR
Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
Last updated: 06 March 2010
Copyright (c) 1997-2010 University of Cambridge.