NAME¶

PCRE2 - Perl-compatible regular expressions (revised API)

SYNOPSIS¶

#include <pcre2.h>

int pcre2_match(const pcre2_code *code, PCRE2_SPTR subject,
  PCRE2_SIZE length, PCRE2_SIZE startoffset,
  uint32_t options, pcre2_match_data *match_data,
  pcre2_match_context *mcontext);

DESCRIPTION¶

This function matches a compiled regular expression against a given subject string, using a matching algorithm that is similar to Perl's. It returns offsets to captured substrings. Its arguments are:

code Points to the compiled pattern
subject Points to the subject string
length Length of the subject string
startoffset Offset in the subject at which to start matching
options Option bits
match_data Points to a match data block, for results
mcontext Points to a match context, or is NULL

A match context is needed only if you want to:

Set up a callout function
Change the limit for calling the internal function match()
Change the limit for calling match() recursively
Set custom memory management when the heap is used for recursion

The length and startoffset values are code units, not characters. The options are:

PCRE2_ANCHORED Match only at the first position
PCRE2_NOTBOL Subject string is not the beginning of a line
PCRE2_NOTEOL Subject string is not the end of a line
PCRE2_NOTEMPTY An empty string is not a valid match
PCRE2_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART An empty string at the start of the subject
is not a valid match
PCRE2_NO_UTF_CHECK Do not check the subject for UTF
validity (only relevant if PCRE2_UTF
was set at compile time)
PCRE2_PARTIAL_SOFT Return PCRE2_ERROR_PARTIAL for a partial
match if no full matches are found
PCRE2_PARTIAL_HARD Return PCRE2_ERROR_PARTIAL for a partial match
if that is found before a full match

For details of partial matching, see the pcre2partial page. There is a complete description of the PCRE2 native API in the pcre2api page and a description of the POSIX API in the pcre2posix page.