.TH PCRE 3
.SH NAME
PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions
.SH SYNOPSIS
.rs
.sp
.B #include <pcre.h>
.PP
.SM
.br
.B pcre *pcre_compile(const char *\fIpattern\fP, int \fIoptions\fP,
.ti +5n
.B const char **\fIerrptr\fP, int *\fIerroffset\fP,
.ti +5n
.B const unsigned char *\fItableptr\fP);
.
.SH DESCRIPTION
.rs
.sp
This function compiles a regular expression into an internal form. Its
arguments are:
.sp
  \fIpattern\fR       A zero-terminated string containing the
                  regular expression to be compiled
  \fIoptions\fR       Zero or more option bits
  \fIerrptr\fR        Where to put an error message
  \fIerroffset\fR     Offset in pattern where error was found
  \fItableptr\fR      Pointer to character tables, or NULL to
                  use the built-in default
.sp
The option bits are:
.sp
  PCRE_ANCHORED         Force pattern anchoring
  PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT     Compile automatic callouts
  PCRE_CASELESS         Do caseless matching
  PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY   $ not to match newline at end
  PCRE_DOTALL           . matches anything including NL
  PCRE_EXTENDED         Ignore whitespace and # comments
  PCRE_EXTRA            PCRE extra features
                          (not much use currently)
  PCRE_MULTILINE        ^ and $ match newlines within data
  PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE  Disable numbered capturing paren-
                          theses (named ones available)
  PCRE_UNGREEDY         Invert greediness of quantifiers
  PCRE_UTF8             Run in UTF-8 mode
  PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK    Do not check the pattern for UTF-8
                          validity (only relevant if
                          PCRE_UTF8 is set)
.sp
PCRE must be built with UTF-8 support in order to use PCRE_UTF8 and
PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK.
.P
The yield of the function is a pointer to a private data structure that
contains the compiled pattern, or NULL if an error was detected.
.P
There is a complete description of the PCRE native API in the
.\" HREF
\fBpcreapi\fR
.\"
page and a description of the POSIX API in the
.\" HREF
\fBpcreposix\fR
.\"
page.