| 1 |
News about PCRE releases
|
| 2 |
------------------------
|
| 3 |
|
| 4 |
Release 8.10 03-Jun-2010
|
| 5 |
------------------------
|
| 6 |
|
| 7 |
There are two major additions: support for (*MAKR) and friends, and the option
|
| 8 |
PCRE_UCP, which changes the behaviour of \b, \d, \s, and \w (and their
|
| 9 |
opposites) so that they make use of Unicode properties. There are also a number
|
| 10 |
of lesser new features, and several bugs have been fixed. A new option,
|
| 11 |
--line-buffered, has been added to pcregrep, for use when it is connected to
|
| 12 |
pipes.
|
| 13 |
|
| 14 |
|
| 15 |
Release 8.02 19-Mar-2010
|
| 16 |
------------------------
|
| 17 |
|
| 18 |
Another bug-fix release.
|
| 19 |
|
| 20 |
|
| 21 |
Release 8.01 19-Jan-2010
|
| 22 |
------------------------
|
| 23 |
|
| 24 |
This is a bug-fix release. Several bugs in the code itself and some bugs and
|
| 25 |
infelicities in the build system have been fixed.
|
| 26 |
|
| 27 |
|
| 28 |
Release 8.00 19-Oct-09
|
| 29 |
----------------------
|
| 30 |
|
| 31 |
Bugs have been fixed in the library and in pcregrep. There are also some
|
| 32 |
enhancements. Restrictions on patterns used for partial matching have been
|
| 33 |
removed, extra information is given for partial matches, the partial matching
|
| 34 |
process has been improved, and an option to make a partial match override a
|
| 35 |
full match is available. The "study" process has been enhanced by finding a
|
| 36 |
lower bound matching length. Groups with duplicate numbers may now have
|
| 37 |
duplicated names without the use of PCRE_DUPNAMES. However, they may not have
|
| 38 |
different names. The documentation has been revised to reflect these changes.
|
| 39 |
The version number has been expanded to 3 digits as it is clear that the rate
|
| 40 |
of change is not slowing down.
|
| 41 |
|
| 42 |
|
| 43 |
Release 7.9 11-Apr-09
|
| 44 |
---------------------
|
| 45 |
|
| 46 |
Mostly bugfixes and tidies with just a couple of minor functional additions.
|
| 47 |
|
| 48 |
|
| 49 |
Release 7.8 05-Sep-08
|
| 50 |
---------------------
|
| 51 |
|
| 52 |
More bug fixes, plus a performance improvement in Unicode character property
|
| 53 |
lookup.
|
| 54 |
|
| 55 |
|
| 56 |
Release 7.7 07-May-08
|
| 57 |
---------------------
|
| 58 |
|
| 59 |
This is once again mainly a bug-fix release, but there are a couple of new
|
| 60 |
features.
|
| 61 |
|
| 62 |
|
| 63 |
Release 7.6 28-Jan-08
|
| 64 |
---------------------
|
| 65 |
|
| 66 |
The main reason for having this release so soon after 7.5 is because it fixes a
|
| 67 |
potential buffer overflow problem in pcre_compile() when run in UTF-8 mode. In
|
| 68 |
addition, the CMake configuration files have been brought up to date.
|
| 69 |
|
| 70 |
|
| 71 |
Release 7.5 10-Jan-08
|
| 72 |
---------------------
|
| 73 |
|
| 74 |
This is mainly a bug-fix release. However the ability to link pcregrep with
|
| 75 |
libz or libbz2 and the ability to link pcretest with libreadline have been
|
| 76 |
added. Also the --line-offsets and --file-offsets options were added to
|
| 77 |
pcregrep.
|
| 78 |
|
| 79 |
|
| 80 |
Release 7.4 21-Sep-07
|
| 81 |
---------------------
|
| 82 |
|
| 83 |
The only change of specification is the addition of options to control whether
|
| 84 |
\R matches any Unicode line ending (the default) or just CR, LF, and CRLF.
|
| 85 |
Otherwise, the changes are bug fixes and a refactoring to reduce the number of
|
| 86 |
relocations needed in a shared library. There have also been some documentation
|
| 87 |
updates, in particular, some more information about using CMake to build PCRE
|
| 88 |
has been added to the NON-UNIX-USE file.
|
| 89 |
|
| 90 |
|
| 91 |
Release 7.3 28-Aug-07
|
| 92 |
---------------------
|
| 93 |
|
| 94 |
Most changes are bug fixes. Some that are not:
|
| 95 |
|
| 96 |
1. There is some support for Perl 5.10's experimental "backtracking control
|
| 97 |
verbs" such as (*PRUNE).
|
| 98 |
|
| 99 |
2. UTF-8 checking is now as per RFC 3629 instead of RFC 2279; this is more
|
| 100 |
restrictive in the strings it accepts.
|
| 101 |
|
| 102 |
3. Checking for potential integer overflow has been made more dynamic, and as a
|
| 103 |
consequence there is no longer a hard limit on the size of a subpattern that
|
| 104 |
has a limited repeat count.
|
| 105 |
|
| 106 |
4. When CRLF is a valid line-ending sequence, pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec()
|
| 107 |
no longer advance by two characters instead of one when an unanchored match
|
| 108 |
fails at CRLF if there are explicit CR or LF matches within the pattern.
|
| 109 |
This gets rid of some anomalous effects that previously occurred.
|
| 110 |
|
| 111 |
5. Some PCRE-specific settings for varying the newline options at the start of
|
| 112 |
a pattern have been added.
|
| 113 |
|
| 114 |
|
| 115 |
Release 7.2 19-Jun-07
|
| 116 |
---------------------
|
| 117 |
|
| 118 |
WARNING: saved patterns that were compiled by earlier versions of PCRE must be
|
| 119 |
recompiled for use with 7.2 (necessitated by the addition of \K, \h, \H, \v,
|
| 120 |
and \V).
|
| 121 |
|
| 122 |
Correction to the notes for 7.1: the note about shared libraries for Windows is
|
| 123 |
wrong. Previously, three libraries were built, but each could function
|
| 124 |
independently. For example, the pcreposix library also included all the
|
| 125 |
functions from the basic pcre library. The change is that the three libraries
|
| 126 |
are no longer independent. They are like the Unix libraries. To use the
|
| 127 |
pcreposix functions, for example, you need to link with both the pcreposix and
|
| 128 |
the basic pcre library.
|
| 129 |
|
| 130 |
Some more features from Perl 5.10 have been added:
|
| 131 |
|
| 132 |
(?-n) and (?+n) relative references for recursion and subroutines.
|
| 133 |
|
| 134 |
(?(-n) and (?(+n) relative references as conditions.
|
| 135 |
|
| 136 |
\k{name} and \g{name} are synonyms for \k<name>.
|
| 137 |
|
| 138 |
\K to reset the start of the matched string; for example, (foo)\Kbar
|
| 139 |
matches bar preceded by foo, but only sets bar as the matched string.
|
| 140 |
|
| 141 |
(?| introduces a group where the capturing parentheses in each alternative
|
| 142 |
start from the same number; for example, (?|(abc)|(xyz)) sets capturing
|
| 143 |
parentheses number 1 in both cases.
|
| 144 |
|
| 145 |
\h, \H, \v, \V match horizontal and vertical whitespace, respectively.
|
| 146 |
|
| 147 |
|
| 148 |
Release 7.1 24-Apr-07
|
| 149 |
---------------------
|
| 150 |
|
| 151 |
There is only one new feature in this release: a linebreak setting of
|
| 152 |
PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF. It is a cut-down version of PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY, which
|
| 153 |
recognizes only CRLF, CR, and LF as linebreaks.
|
| 154 |
|
| 155 |
A few bugs are fixed (see ChangeLog for details), but the major change is a
|
| 156 |
complete re-implementation of the build system. This now has full Autotools
|
| 157 |
support and so is now "standard" in some sense. It should help with compiling
|
| 158 |
PCRE in a wide variety of environments.
|
| 159 |
|
| 160 |
NOTE: when building shared libraries for Windows, three dlls are now built,
|
| 161 |
called libpcre, libpcreposix, and libpcrecpp. Previously, everything was
|
| 162 |
included in a single dll.
|
| 163 |
|
| 164 |
Another important change is that the dftables auxiliary program is no longer
|
| 165 |
compiled and run at "make" time by default. Instead, a default set of character
|
| 166 |
tables (assuming ASCII coding) is used. If you want to use dftables to generate
|
| 167 |
the character tables as previously, add --enable-rebuild-chartables to the
|
| 168 |
"configure" command. You must do this if you are compiling PCRE to run on a
|
| 169 |
system that uses EBCDIC code.
|
| 170 |
|
| 171 |
There is a discussion about character tables in the README file. The default is
|
| 172 |
not to use dftables so that that there is no problem when cross-compiling.
|
| 173 |
|
| 174 |
|
| 175 |
Release 7.0 19-Dec-06
|
| 176 |
---------------------
|
| 177 |
|
| 178 |
This release has a new major number because there have been some internal
|
| 179 |
upheavals to facilitate the addition of new optimizations and other facilities,
|
| 180 |
and to make subsequent maintenance and extension easier. Compilation is likely
|
| 181 |
to be a bit slower, but there should be no major effect on runtime performance.
|
| 182 |
Previously compiled patterns are NOT upwards compatible with this release. If
|
| 183 |
you have saved compiled patterns from a previous release, you will have to
|
| 184 |
re-compile them. Important changes that are visible to users are:
|
| 185 |
|
| 186 |
1. The Unicode property tables have been updated to Unicode 5.0.0, which adds
|
| 187 |
some more scripts.
|
| 188 |
|
| 189 |
2. The option PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY causes PCRE to recognize any Unicode newline
|
| 190 |
sequence as a newline.
|
| 191 |
|
| 192 |
3. The \R escape matches a single Unicode newline sequence as a single unit.
|
| 193 |
|
| 194 |
4. New features that will appear in Perl 5.10 are now in PCRE. These include
|
| 195 |
alternative Perl syntax for named parentheses, and Perl syntax for
|
| 196 |
recursion.
|
| 197 |
|
| 198 |
5. The C++ wrapper interface has been extended by the addition of a
|
| 199 |
QuoteMeta function and the ability to allow copy construction and
|
| 200 |
assignment.
|
| 201 |
|
| 202 |
For a complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file.
|
| 203 |
|
| 204 |
|
| 205 |
Release 6.7 04-Jul-06
|
| 206 |
---------------------
|
| 207 |
|
| 208 |
The main additions to this release are the ability to use the same name for
|
| 209 |
multiple sets of parentheses, and support for CRLF line endings in both the
|
| 210 |
library and pcregrep (and in pcretest for testing).
|
| 211 |
|
| 212 |
Thanks to Ian Taylor, the stack usage for many kinds of pattern has been
|
| 213 |
significantly reduced for certain subject strings.
|
| 214 |
|
| 215 |
|
| 216 |
Release 6.5 01-Feb-06
|
| 217 |
---------------------
|
| 218 |
|
| 219 |
Important changes in this release:
|
| 220 |
|
| 221 |
1. A number of new features have been added to pcregrep.
|
| 222 |
|
| 223 |
2. The Unicode property tables have been updated to Unicode 4.1.0, and the
|
| 224 |
supported properties have been extended with script names such as "Arabic",
|
| 225 |
and the derived properties "Any" and "L&". This has necessitated a change to
|
| 226 |
the interal format of compiled patterns. Any saved compiled patterns that
|
| 227 |
use \p or \P must be recompiled.
|
| 228 |
|
| 229 |
3. The specification of recursion in patterns has been changed so that all
|
| 230 |
recursive subpatterns are automatically treated as atomic groups. Thus, for
|
| 231 |
example, (?R) is treated as if it were (?>(?R)). This is necessary because
|
| 232 |
otherwise there are situations where recursion does not work.
|
| 233 |
|
| 234 |
See the ChangeLog for a complete list of changes, which include a number of bug
|
| 235 |
fixes and tidies.
|
| 236 |
|
| 237 |
|
| 238 |
Release 6.0 07-Jun-05
|
| 239 |
---------------------
|
| 240 |
|
| 241 |
The release number has been increased to 6.0 because of the addition of several
|
| 242 |
major new pieces of functionality.
|
| 243 |
|
| 244 |
A new function, pcre_dfa_exec(), which implements pattern matching using a DFA
|
| 245 |
algorithm, has been added. This has a number of advantages for certain cases,
|
| 246 |
though it does run more slowly, and lacks the ability to capture substrings. On
|
| 247 |
the other hand, it does find all matches, not just the first, and it works
|
| 248 |
better for partial matching. The pcrematching man page discusses the
|
| 249 |
differences.
|
| 250 |
|
| 251 |
The pcretest program has been enhanced so that it can make use of the new
|
| 252 |
pcre_dfa_exec() matching function and the extra features it provides.
|
| 253 |
|
| 254 |
The distribution now includes a C++ wrapper library. This is built
|
| 255 |
automatically if a C++ compiler is found. The pcrecpp man page discusses this
|
| 256 |
interface.
|
| 257 |
|
| 258 |
The code itself has been re-organized into many more files, one for each
|
| 259 |
function, so it no longer requires everything to be linked in when static
|
| 260 |
linkage is used. As a consequence, some internal functions have had to have
|
| 261 |
their names exposed. These functions all have names starting with _pcre_. They
|
| 262 |
are undocumented, and are not intended for use by outside callers.
|
| 263 |
|
| 264 |
The pcregrep program has been enhanced with new functionality such as
|
| 265 |
multiline-matching and options for output more matching context. See the
|
| 266 |
ChangeLog for a complete list of changes to the library and the utility
|
| 267 |
programs.
|
| 268 |
|
| 269 |
|
| 270 |
Release 5.0 13-Sep-04
|
| 271 |
---------------------
|
| 272 |
|
| 273 |
The licence under which PCRE is released has been changed to the more
|
| 274 |
conventional "BSD" licence.
|
| 275 |
|
| 276 |
In the code, some bugs have been fixed, and there are also some major changes
|
| 277 |
in this release (which is why I've increased the number to 5.0). Some changes
|
| 278 |
are internal rearrangements, and some provide a number of new facilities. The
|
| 279 |
new features are:
|
| 280 |
|
| 281 |
1. There's an "automatic callout" feature that inserts callouts before every
|
| 282 |
item in the regex, and there's a new callout field that gives the position
|
| 283 |
in the pattern - useful for debugging and tracing.
|
| 284 |
|
| 285 |
2. The extra_data structure can now be used to pass in a set of character
|
| 286 |
tables at exec time. This is useful if compiled regex are saved and re-used
|
| 287 |
at a later time when the tables may not be at the same address. If the
|
| 288 |
default internal tables are used, the pointer saved with the compiled
|
| 289 |
pattern is now set to NULL, which means that you don't need to do anything
|
| 290 |
special unless you are using custom tables.
|
| 291 |
|
| 292 |
3. It is possible, with some restrictions on the content of the regex, to
|
| 293 |
request "partial" matching. A special return code is given if all of the
|
| 294 |
subject string matched part of the regex. This could be useful for testing
|
| 295 |
an input field as it is being typed.
|
| 296 |
|
| 297 |
4. There is now some optional support for Unicode character properties, which
|
| 298 |
means that the patterns items such as \p{Lu} and \X can now be used. Only
|
| 299 |
the general category properties are supported. If PCRE is compiled with this
|
| 300 |
support, an additional 90K data structure is include, which increases the
|
| 301 |
size of the library dramatically.
|
| 302 |
|
| 303 |
5. There is support for saving compiled patterns and re-using them later.
|
| 304 |
|
| 305 |
6. There is support for running regular expressions that were compiled on a
|
| 306 |
different host with the opposite endianness.
|
| 307 |
|
| 308 |
7. The pcretest program has been extended to accommodate the new features.
|
| 309 |
|
| 310 |
The main internal rearrangement is that sequences of literal characters are no
|
| 311 |
longer handled as strings. Instead, each character is handled on its own. This
|
| 312 |
makes some UTF-8 handling easier, and makes the support of partial matching
|
| 313 |
possible. Compiled patterns containing long literal strings will be larger as a
|
| 314 |
result of this change; I hope that performance will not be much affected.
|
| 315 |
|
| 316 |
|
| 317 |
Release 4.5 01-Dec-03
|
| 318 |
---------------------
|
| 319 |
|
| 320 |
Again mainly a bug-fix and tidying release, with only a couple of new features:
|
| 321 |
|
| 322 |
1. It's possible now to compile PCRE so that it does not use recursive
|
| 323 |
function calls when matching. Instead it gets memory from the heap. This slows
|
| 324 |
things down, but may be necessary on systems with limited stacks.
|
| 325 |
|
| 326 |
2. UTF-8 string checking has been tightened to reject overlong sequences and to
|
| 327 |
check that a starting offset points to the start of a character. Failure of the
|
| 328 |
latter returns a new error code: PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8_OFFSET.
|
| 329 |
|
| 330 |
3. PCRE can now be compiled for systems that use EBCDIC code.
|
| 331 |
|
| 332 |
|
| 333 |
Release 4.4 21-Aug-03
|
| 334 |
---------------------
|
| 335 |
|
| 336 |
This is mainly a bug-fix and tidying release. The only new feature is that PCRE
|
| 337 |
checks UTF-8 strings for validity by default. There is an option to suppress
|
| 338 |
this, just in case anybody wants that teeny extra bit of performance.
|
| 339 |
|
| 340 |
|
| 341 |
Releases 4.1 - 4.3
|
| 342 |
------------------
|
| 343 |
|
| 344 |
Sorry, I forgot about updating the NEWS file for these releases. Please take a
|
| 345 |
look at ChangeLog.
|
| 346 |
|
| 347 |
|
| 348 |
Release 4.0 17-Feb-03
|
| 349 |
---------------------
|
| 350 |
|
| 351 |
There have been a lot of changes for the 4.0 release, adding additional
|
| 352 |
functionality and mending bugs. Below is a list of the highlights of the new
|
| 353 |
functionality. For full details of these features, please consult the
|
| 354 |
documentation. For a complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file.
|
| 355 |
|
| 356 |
1. Support for Perl's \Q...\E escapes.
|
| 357 |
|
| 358 |
2. "Possessive quantifiers" ?+, *+, ++, and {,}+ which come from Sun's Java
|
| 359 |
package. They provide some syntactic sugar for simple cases of "atomic
|
| 360 |
grouping".
|
| 361 |
|
| 362 |
3. Support for the \G assertion. It is true when the current matching position
|
| 363 |
is at the start point of the match.
|
| 364 |
|
| 365 |
4. A new feature that provides some of the functionality that Perl provides
|
| 366 |
with (?{...}). The facility is termed a "callout". The way it is done in PCRE
|
| 367 |
is for the caller to provide an optional function, by setting pcre_callout to
|
| 368 |
its entry point. To get the function called, the regex must include (?C) at
|
| 369 |
appropriate points.
|
| 370 |
|
| 371 |
5. Support for recursive calls to individual subpatterns. This makes it really
|
| 372 |
easy to get totally confused.
|
| 373 |
|
| 374 |
6. Support for named subpatterns. The Python syntax (?P<name>...) is used to
|
| 375 |
name a group.
|
| 376 |
|
| 377 |
7. Several extensions to UTF-8 support; it is now fairly complete. There is an
|
| 378 |
option for pcregrep to make it operate in UTF-8 mode.
|
| 379 |
|
| 380 |
8. The single man page has been split into a number of separate man pages.
|
| 381 |
These also give rise to individual HTML pages which are put in a separate
|
| 382 |
directory. There is an index.html page that lists them all. Some hyperlinking
|
| 383 |
between the pages has been installed.
|
| 384 |
|
| 385 |
|
| 386 |
Release 3.5 15-Aug-01
|
| 387 |
---------------------
|
| 388 |
|
| 389 |
1. The configuring system has been upgraded to use later versions of autoconf
|
| 390 |
and libtool. By default it builds both a shared and a static library if the OS
|
| 391 |
supports it. You can use --disable-shared or --disable-static on the configure
|
| 392 |
command if you want only one of them.
|
| 393 |
|
| 394 |
2. The pcretest utility is now installed along with pcregrep because it is
|
| 395 |
useful for users (to test regexs) and by doing this, it automatically gets
|
| 396 |
relinked by libtool. The documentation has been turned into a man page, so
|
| 397 |
there are now .1, .txt, and .html versions in /doc.
|
| 398 |
|
| 399 |
3. Upgrades to pcregrep:
|
| 400 |
(i) Added long-form option names like gnu grep.
|
| 401 |
(ii) Added --help to list all options with an explanatory phrase.
|
| 402 |
(iii) Added -r, --recursive to recurse into sub-directories.
|
| 403 |
(iv) Added -f, --file to read patterns from a file.
|
| 404 |
|
| 405 |
4. Added --enable-newline-is-cr and --enable-newline-is-lf to the configure
|
| 406 |
script, to force use of CR or LF instead of \n in the source. On non-Unix
|
| 407 |
systems, the value can be set in config.h.
|
| 408 |
|
| 409 |
5. The limit of 200 on non-capturing parentheses is a _nesting_ limit, not an
|
| 410 |
absolute limit. Changed the text of the error message to make this clear, and
|
| 411 |
likewise updated the man page.
|
| 412 |
|
| 413 |
6. The limit of 99 on the number of capturing subpatterns has been removed.
|
| 414 |
The new limit is 65535, which I hope will not be a "real" limit.
|
| 415 |
|
| 416 |
|
| 417 |
Release 3.3 01-Aug-00
|
| 418 |
---------------------
|
| 419 |
|
| 420 |
There is some support for UTF-8 character strings. This is incomplete and
|
| 421 |
experimental. The documentation describes what is and what is not implemented.
|
| 422 |
Otherwise, this is just a bug-fixing release.
|
| 423 |
|
| 424 |
|
| 425 |
Release 3.0 01-Feb-00
|
| 426 |
---------------------
|
| 427 |
|
| 428 |
1. A "configure" script is now used to configure PCRE for Unix systems. It
|
| 429 |
builds a Makefile, a config.h file, and the pcre-config script.
|
| 430 |
|
| 431 |
2. PCRE is built as a shared library by default.
|
| 432 |
|
| 433 |
3. There is support for POSIX classes such as [:alpha:].
|
| 434 |
|
| 435 |
5. There is an experimental recursion feature.
|
| 436 |
|
| 437 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| 438 |
IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSIONS BEFORE 2.00
|
| 439 |
|
| 440 |
Please note that there has been a change in the API such that a larger
|
| 441 |
ovector is required at matching time, to provide some additional workspace.
|
| 442 |
The new man page has details. This change was necessary in order to support
|
| 443 |
some of the new functionality in Perl 5.005.
|
| 444 |
|
| 445 |
IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSION 2.00
|
| 446 |
|
| 447 |
Another (I hope this is the last!) change has been made to the API for the
|
| 448 |
pcre_compile() function. An additional argument has been added to make it
|
| 449 |
possible to pass over a pointer to character tables built in the current
|
| 450 |
locale by pcre_maketables(). To use the default tables, this new arguement
|
| 451 |
should be passed as NULL.
|
| 452 |
|
| 453 |
IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSION 2.05
|
| 454 |
|
| 455 |
Yet another (and again I hope this really is the last) change has been made
|
| 456 |
to the API for the pcre_exec() function. An additional argument has been
|
| 457 |
added to make it possible to start the match other than at the start of the
|
| 458 |
subject string. This is important if there are lookbehinds. The new man
|
| 459 |
page has the details, but you just want to convert existing programs, all
|
| 460 |
you need to do is to stick in a new fifth argument to pcre_exec(), with a
|
| 461 |
value of zero. For example, change
|
| 462 |
|
| 463 |
pcre_exec(pattern, extra, subject, length, options, ovec, ovecsize)
|
| 464 |
to
|
| 465 |
pcre_exec(pattern, extra, subject, length, 0, options, ovec, ovecsize)
|
| 466 |
|
| 467 |
****
|
Parent Directory
| 
Revision Log