NAME

PCRE REGULAR EXPRESSION DETAILS

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.

This document discusses the patterns that are supported by PCRE when one its main matching functions, pcre_exec() (8-bit) or pcre[16|32]_exec() (16- or 32-bit), is used. PCRE also has alternative matching functions, pcre_dfa_exec() and pcre[16|32_dfa_exec(), which match using a different algorithm that is not Perl-compatible. Some of the features discussed below are not available when DFA matching is used. The advantages and disadvantages of the alternative functions, and how they differ from the normal functions, are discussed in the pcrematching page.

SPECIAL START-OF-PATTERN ITEMS

EBCDIC CHARACTER CODES

CHARACTERS AND METACHARACTERS

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 a UTF 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 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

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 \\.

In a UTF mode, only ASCII numbers and letters have any special meaning after a backslash. All other characters (in particular, those whose codepoints are greater than 127) are treated as literals.

If a pattern is compiled with the PCRE_EXTENDED option, most white space in the pattern (other than in a character class), and characters between a # outside a character class and the next newline, inclusive, are ignored. An escaping backslash can be used to include a white space 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. An isolated \E that is not preceded by \Q is ignored. If \Q is not followed by \E later in the pattern, the literal interpretation continues to the end of the pattern (that is, \E is assumed at the end). If the isolated \Q is inside a character class, this causes an error, because the character class is not terminated.

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.)

The 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). Note, however, that it does not actually match the newline. 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) AND \N

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.

The escape sequence \N behaves like a dot, except that it is not affected by the PCRE_DOTALL option. In other words, it matches any character except one that signifies the end of a line. Perl also uses \N to match characters by name; PCRE does not support this.

MATCHING A SINGLE DATA UNIT

PCRE does not allow \C to appear in lookbehind assertions (described below) in a UTF mode, because this would make it impossible to calculate the length of the lookbehind.

In general, the \C escape sequence is best avoided. However, one way of using it that avoids the problem of malformed UTF characters is to use a lookahead to check the length of the next character, as in this pattern, which could be used with a UTF-8 string (ignore white space and line breaks):

(?| (?=[\x00-\x7f])(\C) | (?=[\x80-\x{7ff}])(\C)(\C) | (?=[\x{800}-\x{ffff}])(\C)(\C)(\C) | (?=[\x{10000}-\x{1fffff}])(\C)(\C)(\C)(\C))

A group that starts with (?| resets the capturing parentheses numbers in each alternative (see "Duplicate Subpattern Numbers" below). The assertions at the start of each branch check the next UTF-8 character for values whose encoding uses 1, 2, 3, or 4 bytes, respectively. The character's individual bytes are then captured by the appropriate number of groups.

SQUARE BRACKETS AND CHARACTER CLASSES

A character class matches a single character in the subject. In a UTF mode, the character may be more than one data unit 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 (UTF-16, UTF-32) mode, characters with values greater than 255 (0xffff) can be included in a class as a literal string of data units, 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 a UTF 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 a UTF mode for characters 128 and above, you must ensure that PCRE is compiled with Unicode property support as well as with UTF 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, or immediately after a range. For example, [b-d-z] matches letters in the range b to d, a hyphen character, or z.

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.

An error is generated if a POSIX character class (see below) or an escape sequence other than one that defines a single character appears at a point where a range ending character is expected. For example, [z-\xff] is valid, but [A-\d] and [A-[:digit:]] are not.

Ranges operate in the collating sequence of character values. They can also be used for characters specified numerically, for example [\000-\037]. Ranges can include any characters that are valid for the current mode.

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 a non-UTF mode, if character tables for a French locale are in use, [\xc8-\xcb] matches accented E characters in both cases. In UTF modes, PCRE supports the concept of case for characters with values greater than 128 only when it is compiled with Unicode property support.

The character escape sequences \d, \D, \h, \H, \p, \P, \s, \S, \v, \V, \w, and \W may appear in a character class, and add the characters that they match to the class. For example, [\dABCDEF] matches any hexadecimal digit. In UTF modes, the PCRE_UCP option affects the meanings of \d, \s, \w and their upper case partners, just as it does when they appear outside a character class, as described in the section entitled "Generic character types" above. The escape sequence \b has a different meaning inside a character class; it matches the backspace character. The sequences \B, \N, \R, and \X are not special inside a character class. Like any other unrecognized escape sequences, they are treated as the literal characters "B", "N", "R", and "X" by default, but cause an error if the PCRE_EXTRA option is set.

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, whereas [\w] includes underscore. A positive character class should be read as "something OR something OR ..." and a negative class as "NOT something AND NOT something AND NOT ...".

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, or for a special compatibility feature - see the next two sections), and the terminating closing square bracket. However, escaping other non-alphanumeric characters does no harm.

POSIX CHARACTER CLASSES

[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 and space space white space (the same as \s from PCRE 8.34) upper upper case letters word "word" characters (same as \w) xdigit hexadecimal digits

The default "space" characters are HT (9), LF (10), VT (11), FF (12), CR (13), and space (32). If locale-specific matching is taking place, the list of space characters may be different; there may be fewer or more of them. "Space" used to be different to \s, which did not include VT, for Perl compatibility. However, Perl changed at release 5.18, and PCRE followed at release 8.34. "Space" and \s now match the same set of characters.

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.

By default, characters with values greater than 128 do not match any of the POSIX character classes. However, if the PCRE_UCP option is passed to pcre_compile(), some of the classes are changed so that Unicode character properties are used. This is achieved by replacing certain POSIX classes by other sequences, as follows:

[:alnum:] becomes \p{Xan} [:alpha:] becomes \p{L} [:blank:] becomes \h [:digit:] becomes \p{Nd} [:lower:] becomes \p{Ll} [:space:] becomes \p{Xps} [:upper:] becomes \p{Lu} [:word:] becomes \p{Xwd}

Negated versions, such as [:^alpha:] use \P instead of \p. Three other POSIX classes are handled specially in UCP mode:

[:graph:]

This matches characters that have glyphs that mark the page when printed. In Unicode property terms, it matches all characters with the L, M, N, P, S, or Cf properties, except for:

U+061C Arabic Letter Mark U+180E Mongolian Vowel Separator U+2066 - U+2069 Various "isolate"s

[:print:]

This matches the same characters as [:graph:] plus space characters that are not controls, that is, characters with the Zs property.

[:punct:]

This matches all characters that have the Unicode P (punctuation) property, plus those characters whose code points are less than 128 that have the S (Symbol) property.

The other POSIX classes are unchanged, and match only characters with code points less than 128.

COMPATIBILITY FEATURE FOR WORD BOUNDARIES

[[:<:]] is converted to \b(?=\w) [[:>:]] is converted to \b(?<=\w)

Only these exact character sequences are recognized. A sequence such as [a[:<:]b] provokes error for an unrecognized POSIX class name. This support is not compatible with Perl. It is provided to help migrations from other environments, and is best not used in any new patterns. Note that \b matches at the start and the end of a word (see "Simple assertions" above), and in a Perl-style pattern the preceding or following character normally shows which is wanted, without the need for the assertions that are used above in order to give exactly the POSIX behaviour.

VERTICAL BAR

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

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. An option change within a subpattern (see below for a description of subpatterns) affects only that part of the subpattern 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 compiling or matching 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 are also the (*UTF8), (*UTF16),(*UTF32), and (*UCP) leading sequences that can be used to set UTF and Unicode property modes; they are equivalent to setting the PCRE_UTF8, PCRE_UTF16, PCRE_UTF32 and the PCRE_UCP options, respectively. The (*UTF) sequence is a generic version that can be used with any of the libraries. However, the application can set the PCRE_NEVER_UTF option, which locks out the use of the (*UTF) sequences.

SUBPATTERNS

1. It localizes a set of alternatives. For example, the pattern

cat(aract|erpillar|)

matches "cataract", "caterpillar", or "cat". 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 the matching function. (This applies only to the traditional matching functions; the DFA matching functions do not support capturing.)

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

(?|(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 parentheses 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 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

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, but must start with a non-digit. 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 subpatterns to which the name refers are checked in the order in which they appear in the overall pattern. The first one that is set is used for the reference. For example, this pattern matches both "foofoo" and "barbar" but not "foobar" or "barfoo":

(?:(?<n>foo)|(?<n>bar))\k<n>

If you make a subroutine call to a non-unique named subpattern, 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 always give the same name to subpatterns with the same number, even when PCRE_DUPNAMES is not set.

REPETITION

a literal data character the dot metacharacter the \C escape sequence the \X escape sequence the \R escape sequence an escape such as \d or \pL that matches a single character a character class a back reference (see next section) a parenthesized subpattern (including assertions) a subroutine call to a subpattern (recursive or otherwise)

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 modes, quantifiers apply to characters rather than to individual data units. Thus, for example, \x{100}{2} matches two characters, each of which is represented by a two-byte sequence in a UTF-8 string. Similarly, \X{3} matches three Unicode extended grapheme clusters, each of which may be several data units 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 (but see also the section entitled "Defining subpatterns for use by reference only" below). 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 are some cases 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.

Another case where implicit anchoring is not applied is when the leading .* is inside an atomic group. Once again, a match at the start may fail where a later one succeeds. Consider this pattern:

(?>.*?a)b

It matches "ab" in the subject "aab". The use of the backtracking control verbs (*PRUNE) and (*SKIP) also disable this optimization.

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

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

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. 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 in this example. 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 white space. Otherwise, the \g{ syntax or an empty comment (see "Comments" below) can be used.

ASSERTIONS

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. If such an 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. (Perl sometimes, but not always, does do capturing in negative assertions.)

WARNING: If a positive assertion containing one or more capturing subpatterns succeeds, but failure to match later in the pattern causes backtracking over this assertion, the captures within the assertion are reset only if no higher numbered captures are already set. This is, unfortunately, a fundamental limitation of the current implementation, and as PCRE1 is now in maintenance-only status, it is unlikely ever to change.

For compatibility with Perl, assertion subpatterns may be repeated; though it makes no sense to assert the same thing several times, the side effect of capturing parentheses may occasionally be useful. In practice, there only three cases:

(1) If the quantifier is {0}, the assertion is never obeyed during matching. However, it may contain internal capturing parenthesized groups that are called from elsewhere via the subroutine mechanism.

(2) If quantifier is {0,n} where n is greater than zero, it is treated as if it were {0,1}. At run time, the rest of the pattern match is tried with and without the assertion, the order depending on the greediness of the quantifier.

(3) If the minimum repetition is greater than zero, the quantifier is ignored. The assertion is obeyed just once when encountered during matching.

CONDITIONAL SUBPATTERNS

(?(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. Each of the two alternatives may itself contain nested subpatterns of any form, including conditional subpatterns; the restriction to two alternatives applies only at the level of the condition. This pattern fragment is an example where the alternatives are complex:

(?(1) (A|B|C) | (D | (?(2)E|F) | E) )

There are four kinds of condition: references to subpatterns, references to recursion, a pseudo-condition called DEFINE, and assertions.

COMMENTS

The sequence (?# marks the start of a comment that continues up to the next closing parenthesis. Nested parentheses are not permitted. If the PCRE_EXTENDED option is set, an unescaped # character also introduces a comment, which in this case continues to immediately after the next newline character or character sequence in the pattern. Which characters are interpreted as newlines is controlled by the options passed to a compiling function or by a special sequence at the start of the pattern, as described in the section entitled "Newline conventions" above. Note that the end of this type of comment is a literal newline sequence in the pattern; escape sequences that happen to represent a newline do not count. For example, consider this pattern when PCRE_EXTENDED is set, and the default newline convention is in force:

abc #comment \n still comment

On encountering the # character, pcre_compile() skips along, looking for a newline in the pattern. The sequence \n is still literal at this stage, so it does not terminate the comment. Only an actual character with the code value 0x0a (the default newline) does so.

RECURSIVE PATTERNS

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 subroutine call of the subpattern of the given number, provided that it occurs inside that subpattern. (If not, it is a non-recursive 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. 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 non-recursive 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 captured value is unset, even if it was (temporarily) set at a deeper level during the matching process.

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.

SUBPATTERNS AS SUBROUTINES

(...(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.

All subroutine calls, whether recursive or not, are always treated as atomic groups. That is, once a subroutine 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.

Processing options such as case-independence are fixed when a subpattern is defined, so if it is used as a subroutine, such options 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

(?<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

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 (8-bit library) or pcre[16|32]_callout (16-bit or 32-bit library). 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 a compiling function, callouts are automatically installed before each item in the pattern. They are all numbered 255. If there is a conditional group in the pattern whose condition is an assertion, an additional callout is inserted just before the condition. An explicit callout may also be set at this position, as in this example:

(?(?C9)(?=a)abc|def)

Note that this applies only to assertion conditions, not to other types of condition.

During matching, when PCRE reaches a callout point, 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 the matching function. The callout function may cause matching to proceed, to backtrack, or to fail altogether.

By default, PCRE implements a number of optimizations at compile time and matching time, and one side-effect is that sometimes callouts are skipped. If you need all possible callouts to happen, you need to set options that disable the relevant optimizations. More details, and a complete description of the interface to the callout function, are given in the pcrecallout documentation.

BACKTRACKING CONTROL

The new verbs make use of what was previously invalid syntax: an opening parenthesis followed by an asterisk. They are generally of the form (*VERB) or (*VERB:NAME). Some may take either form, possibly behaving differently depending on whether or not a name is present. A name is any sequence of characters that does not include a closing parenthesis. The maximum length of name is 255 in the 8-bit library and 65535 in the 16-bit and 32-bit libraries. If the name is empty, that is, if the closing parenthesis immediately follows the colon, the effect is as if the colon were not there. Any number of these verbs may occur in a pattern.

Since these verbs are specifically related to backtracking, most of them can be used only when the pattern is to be matched using one of the traditional matching functions, because these use a backtracking algorithm. With the exception of (*FAIL), which behaves like a failing negative assertion, the backtracking control verbs cause an error if encountered by a DFA matching function.

The behaviour of these verbs in repeated groups, assertions, and in subpatterns called as subroutines (whether or not recursively) is documented below.

SEE ALSO

AUTHOR

Philip Hazel
University Computing Service
Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.

REVISION

Last updated: 23 October 2016
Copyright (c) 1997-2016 University of Cambridge.