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News about PCRE releases
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------------------------
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Release 7.5 27-Dec-07
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---------------------
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This is mainly a bug-fix release. However the ability to link pcregrep with
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libz or libbz2 and the ability to link pcretest with libreadline have been
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added. Also the --line-offsets and --file-offsets options were added to
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pcregrep.
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Release 7.4 21-Sep-07
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---------------------
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The only change of specification is the addition of options to control whether
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\R matches any Unicode line ending (the default) or just CR, LF, and CRLF.
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Otherwise, the changes are bug fixes and a refactoring to reduce the number of
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relocations needed in a shared library. There have also been some documentation
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updates, in particular, some more information about using CMake to build PCRE
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has been added to the NON-UNIX-USE file.
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Release 7.3 28-Aug-07
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---------------------
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Most changes are bug fixes. Some that are not:
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1. There is some support for Perl 5.10's experimental "backtracking control
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verbs" such as (*PRUNE).
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2. UTF-8 checking is now as per RFC 3629 instead of RFC 2279; this is more
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restrictive in the strings it accepts.
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3. Checking for potential integer overflow has been made more dynamic, and as a
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consequence there is no longer a hard limit on the size of a subpattern that
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has a limited repeat count.
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4. When CRLF is a valid line-ending sequence, pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec()
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no longer advance by two characters instead of one when an unanchored match
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fails at CRLF if there are explicit CR or LF matches within the pattern.
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This gets rid of some anomalous effects that previously occurred.
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5. Some PCRE-specific settings for varying the newline options at the start of
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a pattern have been added.
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Release 7.2 19-Jun-07
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---------------------
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WARNING: saved patterns that were compiled by earlier versions of PCRE must be
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recompiled for use with 7.2 (necessitated by the addition of \K, \h, \H, \v,
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and \V).
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Correction to the notes for 7.1: the note about shared libraries for Windows is
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wrong. Previously, three libraries were built, but each could function
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independently. For example, the pcreposix library also included all the
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functions from the basic pcre library. The change is that the three libraries
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are no longer independent. They are like the Unix libraries. To use the
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pcreposix functions, for example, you need to link with both the pcreposix and
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the basic pcre library.
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Some more features from Perl 5.10 have been added:
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(?-n) and (?+n) relative references for recursion and subroutines.
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(?(-n) and (?(+n) relative references as conditions.
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\k{name} and \g{name} are synonyms for \k<name>.
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\K to reset the start of the matched string; for example, (foo)\Kbar
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matches bar preceded by foo, but only sets bar as the matched string.
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(?| introduces a group where the capturing parentheses in each alternative
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start from the same number; for example, (?|(abc)|(xyz)) sets capturing
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parentheses number 1 in both cases.
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\h, \H, \v, \V match horizontal and vertical whitespace, respectively.
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Release 7.1 24-Apr-07
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---------------------
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There is only one new feature in this release: a linebreak setting of
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PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF. It is a cut-down version of PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY, which
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recognizes only CRLF, CR, and LF as linebreaks.
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A few bugs are fixed (see ChangeLog for details), but the major change is a
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complete re-implementation of the build system. This now has full Autotools
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support and so is now "standard" in some sense. It should help with compiling
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PCRE in a wide variety of environments.
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NOTE: when building shared libraries for Windows, three dlls are now built,
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called libpcre, libpcreposix, and libpcrecpp. Previously, everything was
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included in a single dll.
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Another important change is that the dftables auxiliary program is no longer
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compiled and run at "make" time by default. Instead, a default set of character
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tables (assuming ASCII coding) is used. If you want to use dftables to generate
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the character tables as previously, add --enable-rebuild-chartables to the
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"configure" command. You must do this if you are compiling PCRE to run on a
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system that uses EBCDIC code.
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There is a discussion about character tables in the README file. The default is
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not to use dftables so that that there is no problem when cross-compiling.
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Release 7.0 19-Dec-06
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---------------------
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This release has a new major number because there have been some internal
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upheavals to facilitate the addition of new optimizations and other facilities,
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and to make subsequent maintenance and extension easier. Compilation is likely
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to be a bit slower, but there should be no major effect on runtime performance.
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Previously compiled patterns are NOT upwards compatible with this release. If
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you have saved compiled patterns from a previous release, you will have to
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re-compile them. Important changes that are visible to users are:
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1. The Unicode property tables have been updated to Unicode 5.0.0, which adds
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some more scripts.
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2. The option PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY causes PCRE to recognize any Unicode newline
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sequence as a newline.
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3. The \R escape matches a single Unicode newline sequence as a single unit.
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4. New features that will appear in Perl 5.10 are now in PCRE. These include
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alternative Perl syntax for named parentheses, and Perl syntax for
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recursion.
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5. The C++ wrapper interface has been extended by the addition of a
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QuoteMeta function and the ability to allow copy construction and
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assignment.
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For a complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file.
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Release 6.7 04-Jul-06
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---------------------
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The main additions to this release are the ability to use the same name for
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multiple sets of parentheses, and support for CRLF line endings in both the
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library and pcregrep (and in pcretest for testing).
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Thanks to Ian Taylor, the stack usage for many kinds of pattern has been
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significantly reduced for certain subject strings.
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Release 6.5 01-Feb-06
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---------------------
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Important changes in this release:
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1. A number of new features have been added to pcregrep.
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2. The Unicode property tables have been updated to Unicode 4.1.0, and the
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supported properties have been extended with script names such as "Arabic",
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and the derived properties "Any" and "L&". This has necessitated a change to
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the interal format of compiled patterns. Any saved compiled patterns that
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use \p or \P must be recompiled.
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3. The specification of recursion in patterns has been changed so that all
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recursive subpatterns are automatically treated as atomic groups. Thus, for
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example, (?R) is treated as if it were (?>(?R)). This is necessary because
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otherwise there are situations where recursion does not work.
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See the ChangeLog for a complete list of changes, which include a number of bug
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fixes and tidies.
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Release 6.0 07-Jun-05
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---------------------
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The release number has been increased to 6.0 because of the addition of several
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major new pieces of functionality.
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A new function, pcre_dfa_exec(), which implements pattern matching using a DFA
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algorithm, has been added. This has a number of advantages for certain cases,
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though it does run more slowly, and lacks the ability to capture substrings. On
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the other hand, it does find all matches, not just the first, and it works
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better for partial matching. The pcrematching man page discusses the
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differences.
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The pcretest program has been enhanced so that it can make use of the new
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pcre_dfa_exec() matching function and the extra features it provides.
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The distribution now includes a C++ wrapper library. This is built
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automatically if a C++ compiler is found. The pcrecpp man page discusses this
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interface.
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The code itself has been re-organized into many more files, one for each
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function, so it no longer requires everything to be linked in when static
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linkage is used. As a consequence, some internal functions have had to have
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their names exposed. These functions all have names starting with _pcre_. They
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are undocumented, and are not intended for use by outside callers.
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The pcregrep program has been enhanced with new functionality such as
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multiline-matching and options for output more matching context. See the
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ChangeLog for a complete list of changes to the library and the utility
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programs.
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Release 5.0 13-Sep-04
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---------------------
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The licence under which PCRE is released has been changed to the more
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conventional "BSD" licence.
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In the code, some bugs have been fixed, and there are also some major changes
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in this release (which is why I've increased the number to 5.0). Some changes
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are internal rearrangements, and some provide a number of new facilities. The
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new features are:
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1. There's an "automatic callout" feature that inserts callouts before every
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item in the regex, and there's a new callout field that gives the position
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in the pattern - useful for debugging and tracing.
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2. The extra_data structure can now be used to pass in a set of character
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tables at exec time. This is useful if compiled regex are saved and re-used
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at a later time when the tables may not be at the same address. If the
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default internal tables are used, the pointer saved with the compiled
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pattern is now set to NULL, which means that you don't need to do anything
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special unless you are using custom tables.
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3. It is possible, with some restrictions on the content of the regex, to
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request "partial" matching. A special return code is given if all of the
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subject string matched part of the regex. This could be useful for testing
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an input field as it is being typed.
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4. There is now some optional support for Unicode character properties, which
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means that the patterns items such as \p{Lu} and \X can now be used. Only
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the general category properties are supported. If PCRE is compiled with this
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support, an additional 90K data structure is include, which increases the
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size of the library dramatically.
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5. There is support for saving compiled patterns and re-using them later.
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6. There is support for running regular expressions that were compiled on a
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different host with the opposite endianness.
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7. The pcretest program has been extended to accommodate the new features.
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The main internal rearrangement is that sequences of literal characters are no
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longer handled as strings. Instead, each character is handled on its own. This
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makes some UTF-8 handling easier, and makes the support of partial matching
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possible. Compiled patterns containing long literal strings will be larger as a
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result of this change; I hope that performance will not be much affected.
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Release 4.5 01-Dec-03
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---------------------
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Again mainly a bug-fix and tidying release, with only a couple of new features:
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1. It's possible now to compile PCRE so that it does not use recursive
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function calls when matching. Instead it gets memory from the heap. This slows
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things down, but may be necessary on systems with limited stacks.
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2. UTF-8 string checking has been tightened to reject overlong sequences and to
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check that a starting offset points to the start of a character. Failure of the
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latter returns a new error code: PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8_OFFSET.
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3. PCRE can now be compiled for systems that use EBCDIC code.
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Release 4.4 21-Aug-03
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---------------------
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This is mainly a bug-fix and tidying release. The only new feature is that PCRE
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checks UTF-8 strings for validity by default. There is an option to suppress
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this, just in case anybody wants that teeny extra bit of performance.
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Releases 4.1 - 4.3
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------------------
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Sorry, I forgot about updating the NEWS file for these releases. Please take a
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look at ChangeLog.
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Release 4.0 17-Feb-03
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---------------------
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There have been a lot of changes for the 4.0 release, adding additional
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functionality and mending bugs. Below is a list of the highlights of the new
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functionality. For full details of these features, please consult the
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documentation. For a complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file.
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1. Support for Perl's \Q...\E escapes.
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2. "Possessive quantifiers" ?+, *+, ++, and {,}+ which come from Sun's Java
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package. They provide some syntactic sugar for simple cases of "atomic
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grouping".
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3. Support for the \G assertion. It is true when the current matching position
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is at the start point of the match.
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4. A new feature that provides some of the functionality that Perl provides
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with (?{...}). The facility is termed a "callout". The way it is done in PCRE
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is for the caller to provide an optional function, by setting pcre_callout to
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its entry point. To get the function called, the regex must include (?C) at
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appropriate points.
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5. Support for recursive calls to individual subpatterns. This makes it really
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easy to get totally confused.
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6. Support for named subpatterns. The Python syntax (?P<name>...) is used to
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name a group.
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7. Several extensions to UTF-8 support; it is now fairly complete. There is an
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option for pcregrep to make it operate in UTF-8 mode.
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8. The single man page has been split into a number of separate man pages.
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These also give rise to individual HTML pages which are put in a separate
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directory. There is an index.html page that lists them all. Some hyperlinking
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between the pages has been installed.
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Release 3.5 15-Aug-01
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---------------------
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1. The configuring system has been upgraded to use later versions of autoconf
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and libtool. By default it builds both a shared and a static library if the OS
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supports it. You can use --disable-shared or --disable-static on the configure
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command if you want only one of them.
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2. The pcretest utility is now installed along with pcregrep because it is
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useful for users (to test regexs) and by doing this, it automatically gets
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relinked by libtool. The documentation has been turned into a man page, so
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there are now .1, .txt, and .html versions in /doc.
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3. Upgrades to pcregrep:
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(i) Added long-form option names like gnu grep.
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(ii) Added --help to list all options with an explanatory phrase.
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(iii) Added -r, --recursive to recurse into sub-directories.
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(iv) Added -f, --file to read patterns from a file.
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4. Added --enable-newline-is-cr and --enable-newline-is-lf to the configure
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script, to force use of CR or LF instead of \n in the source. On non-Unix
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systems, the value can be set in config.h.
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5. The limit of 200 on non-capturing parentheses is a _nesting_ limit, not an
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absolute limit. Changed the text of the error message to make this clear, and
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likewise updated the man page.
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6. The limit of 99 on the number of capturing subpatterns has been removed.
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The new limit is 65535, which I hope will not be a "real" limit.
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Release 3.3 01-Aug-00
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---------------------
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There is some support for UTF-8 character strings. This is incomplete and
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experimental. The documentation describes what is and what is not implemented.
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Otherwise, this is just a bug-fixing release.
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Release 3.0 01-Feb-00
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---------------------
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1. A "configure" script is now used to configure PCRE for Unix systems. It
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builds a Makefile, a config.h file, and the pcre-config script.
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2. PCRE is built as a shared library by default.
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3. There is support for POSIX classes such as [:alpha:].
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5. There is an experimental recursion feature.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSIONS BEFORE 2.00
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Please note that there has been a change in the API such that a larger
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ovector is required at matching time, to provide some additional workspace.
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The new man page has details. This change was necessary in order to support
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some of the new functionality in Perl 5.005.
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IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSION 2.00
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Another (I hope this is the last!) change has been made to the API for the
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pcre_compile() function. An additional argument has been added to make it
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possible to pass over a pointer to character tables built in the current
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locale by pcre_maketables(). To use the default tables, this new arguement
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should be passed as NULL.
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IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSION 2.05
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Yet another (and again I hope this really is the last) change has been made
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to the API for the pcre_exec() function. An additional argument has been
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added to make it possible to start the match other than at the start of the
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subject string. This is important if there are lookbehinds. The new man
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page has the details, but you just want to convert existing programs, all
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you need to do is to stick in a new fifth argument to pcre_exec(), with a
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value of zero. For example, change
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pcre_exec(pattern, extra, subject, length, options, ovec, ovecsize)
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to
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pcre_exec(pattern, extra, subject, length, 0, options, ovec, ovecsize)
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****
|
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