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News about PCRE releases |
News about PCRE releases |
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Release 8.33 28-April-2013 |
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-------------------------- |
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A number of bugs are fixed, and some performance improvements have been made. |
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There are also some new features, of which these are the most important: |
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. The behaviour of the backtracking verbs has been rationalized and |
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documented in more detail. |
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. JIT now supports callouts and all of the backtracking verbs. |
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. Unicode validation has been updated in the light of Unicode Corrigendum #9, |
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which points out that "non characters" are not "characters that may not |
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appear in Unicode strings" but rather "characters that are reserved for |
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internal use and have only local meaning". |
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. (*LIMIT_MATCH=d) and (*LIMIT_RECURSION=d) have been added so that the |
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creator of a pattern can specify lower (but not higher) limits for the |
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matching process. |
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. The PCRE_NEVER_UTF option is available to prevent pattern-writers from using |
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the (*UTF) feature, as this could be a security issue. |
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Release 8.32 30-November-2012 |
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----------------------------- |
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This release fixes a number of bugs, but also has some new features. These are |
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the highlights: |
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. There is now support for 32-bit character strings and UTF-32. Like the |
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16-bit support, this is done by compiling a separate 32-bit library. |
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. \X now matches a Unicode extended grapheme cluster. |
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. Case-independent matching of Unicode characters that have more than one |
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"other case" now makes all three (or more) characters equivalent. This |
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applies, for example, to Greek Sigma, which has two lowercase versions. |
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. Unicode character properties are updated to Unicode 6.2.0. |
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. The EBCDIC support, which had decayed, has had a spring clean. |
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. A number of JIT optimizations have been added, which give faster JIT |
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execution speed. In addition, a new direct interface to JIT execution is |
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available. This bypasses some of the sanity checks of pcre_exec() to give a |
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noticeable speed-up. |
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. A number of issues in pcregrep have been fixed, making it more compatible |
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with GNU grep. In particular, --exclude and --include (and variants) apply |
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to all files now, not just those obtained from scanning a directory |
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recursively. In Windows environments, the default action for directories is |
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now "skip" instead of "read" (which provokes an error). |
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. If the --only-matching (-o) option in pcregrep is specified multiple |
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times, each one causes appropriate output. For example, -o1 -o2 outputs the |
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substrings matched by the 1st and 2nd capturing parentheses. A separating |
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string can be specified by --om-separator (default empty). |
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. When PCRE is built via Autotools using a version of gcc that has the |
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"visibility" feature, it is used to hide internal library functions that are |
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not part of the public API. |
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Release 8.31 06-July-2012 |
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------------------------- |
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This is mainly a bug-fixing release, with a small number of developments: |
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. The JIT compiler now supports partial matching and the (*MARK) and |
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(*COMMIT) verbs. |
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. PCRE_INFO_MAXLOOKBEHIND can be used to find the longest lookbehind in a |
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pattern. |
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. There should be a performance improvement when using the heap instead of the |
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stack for recursion. |
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. pcregrep can now be linked with libedit as an alternative to libreadline. |
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. pcregrep now has a --file-list option where the list of files to scan is |
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given as a file. |
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. pcregrep now recognizes binary files and there are related options. |
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. The Unicode tables have been updated to 6.1.0. |
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As always, the full list of changes is in the ChangeLog file. |
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Release 8.30 04-February-2012 |
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----------------------------- |
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Release 8.30 introduces a major new feature: support for 16-bit character |
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strings, compiled as a separate library. There are a few changes to the |
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8-bit library, in addition to some bug fixes. |
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. The pcre_info() function, which has been obsolete for over 10 years, has |
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been removed. |
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. When a compiled pattern was saved to a file and later reloaded on a host |
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with different endianness, PCRE used automatically to swap the bytes in some |
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of the data fields. With the advent of the 16-bit library, where more of this |
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swapping is needed, it is no longer done automatically. Instead, the bad |
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endianness is detected and a specific error is given. The user can then call |
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a new function called pcre_pattern_to_host_byte_order() (or an equivalent |
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16-bit function) to do the swap. |
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. In UTF-8 mode, the values 0xd800 to 0xdfff are not legal Unicode |
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code points and are now faulted. (They are the so-called "surrogates" |
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that are reserved for coding high values in UTF-16.) |
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Release 8.21 12-Dec-2011 |
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------------------------ |
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This is almost entirely a bug-fix release. The only new feature is the ability |
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to obtain the size of the memory used by the JIT compiler. |
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Release 8.20 21-Oct-2011 |
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------------------------ |
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The main change in this release is the inclusion of Zoltan Herczeg's |
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just-in-time compiler support, which can be accessed by building PCRE with |
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--enable-jit. Large performance benefits can be had in many situations. 8.20 |
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also fixes an unfortunate bug that was introduced in 8.13 as well as tidying up |
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a number of infelicities and differences from Perl. |
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Release 8.13 16-Aug-2011 |
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------------------------ |
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This is mainly a bug-fix release. There has been a lot of internal refactoring. |
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The Unicode tables have been updated. The only new feature in the library is |
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the passing of *MARK information to callouts. Some additions have been made to |
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pcretest to make testing easier and more comprehensive. There is a new option |
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for pcregrep to adjust its internal buffer size. |
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Release 8.12 15-Jan-2011 |
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------------------------ |
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This release fixes some bugs in pcregrep, one of which caused the tests to fail |
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on 64-bit big-endian systems. There are no changes to the code of the library. |
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Release 8.11 10-Dec-2010 |
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------------------------ |
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A number of bugs in the library and in pcregrep have been fixed. As always, see |
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ChangeLog for details. The following are the non-bug-fix changes: |
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. Added --match-limit and --recursion-limit to pcregrep. |
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. Added an optional parentheses number to the -o and --only-matching options |
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of pcregrep. |
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. Changed the way PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD affects the matching of $, \z, \Z, \b, and |
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\B. |
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. Added PCRE_ERROR_SHORTUTF8 to make it possible to distinguish between a |
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bad UTF-8 sequence and one that is incomplete when using PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD. |
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. Recognize (*NO_START_OPT) at the start of a pattern to set the PCRE_NO_ |
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START_OPTIMIZE option, which is now allowed at compile time |
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Release 8.10 25-Jun-2010 |
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------------------------ |
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There are two major additions: support for (*MARK) and friends, and the option |
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PCRE_UCP, which changes the behaviour of \b, \d, \s, and \w (and their |
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opposites) so that they make use of Unicode properties. There are also a number |
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of lesser new features, and several bugs have been fixed. A new option, |
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--line-buffered, has been added to pcregrep, for use when it is connected to |
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pipes. |
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Release 8.02 19-Mar-2010 |
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------------------------ |
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Another bug-fix release. |
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Release 8.01 19-Jan-2010 |
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------------------------ |
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This is a bug-fix release. Several bugs in the code itself and some bugs and |
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infelicities in the build system have been fixed. |
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Release 8.00 19-Oct-09 |
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---------------------- |
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Bugs have been fixed in the library and in pcregrep. There are also some |
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enhancements. Restrictions on patterns used for partial matching have been |
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removed, extra information is given for partial matches, the partial matching |
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process has been improved, and an option to make a partial match override a |
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full match is available. The "study" process has been enhanced by finding a |
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lower bound matching length. Groups with duplicate numbers may now have |
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duplicated names without the use of PCRE_DUPNAMES. However, they may not have |
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different names. The documentation has been revised to reflect these changes. |
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The version number has been expanded to 3 digits as it is clear that the rate |
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of change is not slowing down. |
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Release 7.9 11-Apr-09 |
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--------------------- |
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Mostly bugfixes and tidies with just a couple of minor functional additions. |
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Release 7.8 05-Sep-08 |
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--------------------- |
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More bug fixes, plus a performance improvement in Unicode character property |
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lookup. |
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Release 7.7 07-May-08 |
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--------------------- |
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This is once again mainly a bug-fix release, but there are a couple of new |
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features. |
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Release 7.6 28-Jan-08 |
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--------------------- |
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The main reason for having this release so soon after 7.5 is because it fixes a |
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potential buffer overflow problem in pcre_compile() when run in UTF-8 mode. In |
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addition, the CMake configuration files have been brought up to date. |
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Release 7.5 10-Jan-08 |
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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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|
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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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|
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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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|
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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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|
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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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|
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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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|
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3. The \R escape matches a single Unicode newline sequence as a single unit. |
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|
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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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|
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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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|
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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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|
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|
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Release 6.5 01-Feb-06 |
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--------------------- |
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|
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Important changes in this release: |
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|
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1. A number of new features have been added to pcregrep. |
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|
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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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|
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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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|
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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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|
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Release 6.0 07-Jun-05 |
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--------------------- |
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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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|
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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 |
| 416 |
|
better for partial matching. The pcrematching man page discusses the |
| 417 |
|
differences. |
| 418 |
|
|
| 419 |
|
The pcretest program has been enhanced so that it can make use of the new |
| 420 |
|
pcre_dfa_exec() matching function and the extra features it provides. |
| 421 |
|
|
| 422 |
|
The distribution now includes a C++ wrapper library. This is built |
| 423 |
|
automatically if a C++ compiler is found. The pcrecpp man page discusses this |
| 424 |
|
interface. |
| 425 |
|
|
| 426 |
|
The code itself has been re-organized into many more files, one for each |
| 427 |
|
function, so it no longer requires everything to be linked in when static |
| 428 |
|
linkage is used. As a consequence, some internal functions have had to have |
| 429 |
|
their names exposed. These functions all have names starting with _pcre_. They |
| 430 |
|
are undocumented, and are not intended for use by outside callers. |
| 431 |
|
|
| 432 |
|
The pcregrep program has been enhanced with new functionality such as |
| 433 |
|
multiline-matching and options for output more matching context. See the |
| 434 |
|
ChangeLog for a complete list of changes to the library and the utility |
| 435 |
|
programs. |
| 436 |
|
|
| 437 |
|
|
| 438 |
|
Release 5.0 13-Sep-04 |
| 439 |
|
--------------------- |
| 440 |
|
|
| 441 |
|
The licence under which PCRE is released has been changed to the more |
| 442 |
|
conventional "BSD" licence. |
| 443 |
|
|
| 444 |
|
In the code, some bugs have been fixed, and there are also some major changes |
| 445 |
|
in this release (which is why I've increased the number to 5.0). Some changes |
| 446 |
|
are internal rearrangements, and some provide a number of new facilities. The |
| 447 |
|
new features are: |
| 448 |
|
|
| 449 |
|
1. There's an "automatic callout" feature that inserts callouts before every |
| 450 |
|
item in the regex, and there's a new callout field that gives the position |
| 451 |
|
in the pattern - useful for debugging and tracing. |
| 452 |
|
|
| 453 |
|
2. The extra_data structure can now be used to pass in a set of character |
| 454 |
|
tables at exec time. This is useful if compiled regex are saved and re-used |
| 455 |
|
at a later time when the tables may not be at the same address. If the |
| 456 |
|
default internal tables are used, the pointer saved with the compiled |
| 457 |
|
pattern is now set to NULL, which means that you don't need to do anything |
| 458 |
|
special unless you are using custom tables. |
| 459 |
|
|
| 460 |
|
3. It is possible, with some restrictions on the content of the regex, to |
| 461 |
|
request "partial" matching. A special return code is given if all of the |
| 462 |
|
subject string matched part of the regex. This could be useful for testing |
| 463 |
|
an input field as it is being typed. |
| 464 |
|
|
| 465 |
|
4. There is now some optional support for Unicode character properties, which |
| 466 |
|
means that the patterns items such as \p{Lu} and \X can now be used. Only |
| 467 |
|
the general category properties are supported. If PCRE is compiled with this |
| 468 |
|
support, an additional 90K data structure is include, which increases the |
| 469 |
|
size of the library dramatically. |
| 470 |
|
|
| 471 |
|
5. There is support for saving compiled patterns and re-using them later. |
| 472 |
|
|
| 473 |
|
6. There is support for running regular expressions that were compiled on a |
| 474 |
|
different host with the opposite endianness. |
| 475 |
|
|
| 476 |
|
7. The pcretest program has been extended to accommodate the new features. |
| 477 |
|
|
| 478 |
|
The main internal rearrangement is that sequences of literal characters are no |
| 479 |
|
longer handled as strings. Instead, each character is handled on its own. This |
| 480 |
|
makes some UTF-8 handling easier, and makes the support of partial matching |
| 481 |
|
possible. Compiled patterns containing long literal strings will be larger as a |
| 482 |
|
result of this change; I hope that performance will not be much affected. |
| 483 |
|
|
| 484 |
|
|
| 485 |
Release 4.5 01-Dec-03 |
Release 4.5 01-Dec-03 |
| 486 |
--------------------- |
--------------------- |
| 487 |
|
|
Parent Directory
| 
Revision Log
| 
Patch