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<title>pcre2_compile specification</title>
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<h1>pcre2_compile man page</h1>
<p>
Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE2 index page</a>.
</p>
<p>
This page is part of the PCRE2 HTML documentation. It was generated
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please consult the man page, in case the conversion went wrong.
<br>
<br><b>
SYNOPSIS
</b><br>
<P>
<b>#include &#60;pcre2.h&#62;</b>
</P>
<P>
<b>pcre2_code *pcre2_compile(PCRE2_SPTR <i>pattern</i>, PCRE2_SIZE <i>length</i>,</b>
<b>  uint32_t <i>options</i>, int *<i>errorcode</i>, PCRE2_SIZE *<i>erroroffset,</i></b>
<b>  pcre2_compile_context *<i>ccontext</i>);</b>
</P>
<br><b>
DESCRIPTION
</b><br>
<P>
This function compiles a regular expression pattern into an internal form. Its
arguments are:
<pre>
  <i>pattern</i>       A string containing expression to be compiled
  <i>length</i>        The length of the string or PCRE2_ZERO_TERMINATED
  <i>options</i>       Option bits
  <i>errorcode</i>     Where to put an error code
  <i>erroffset</i>     Where to put an error offset
  <i>ccontext</i>      Pointer to a compile context or NULL
</pre>
The length of the pattern and any error offset that is returned are in code
units, not characters. A compile context is needed only if you want to provide
custom memory allocation functions, or to provide an external function for
system stack size checking, or to change one or more of these parameters:
<pre>
  What \R matches (Unicode newlines, or CR, LF, CRLF only);
  PCRE2's character tables;
  The newline character sequence;
  The compile time nested parentheses limit;
  The maximum pattern length (in code units) that is allowed.
  The additional options bits (see pcre2_set_compile_extra_options())
</pre>
The option bits are:
<pre>
  PCRE2_ANCHORED           Force pattern anchoring
  PCRE2_ALLOW_EMPTY_CLASS  Allow empty classes
  PCRE2_ALT_BSUX           Alternative handling of \u, \U, and \x
  PCRE2_ALT_CIRCUMFLEX     Alternative handling of ^ in multiline mode
  PCRE2_ALT_VERBNAMES      Process backslashes in verb names
  PCRE2_AUTO_CALLOUT       Compile automatic callouts
  PCRE2_CASELESS           Do caseless matching
  PCRE2_DOLLAR_ENDONLY     $ not to match newline at end
  PCRE2_DOTALL             . matches anything including NL
  PCRE2_DUPNAMES           Allow duplicate names for subpatterns
  PCRE2_ENDANCHORED        Pattern can match only at end of subject
  PCRE2_EXTENDED           Ignore white space and # comments
  PCRE2_FIRSTLINE          Force matching to be before newline
  PCRE2_LITERAL            Pattern characters are all literal
  PCRE2_MATCH_UNSET_BACKREF  Match unset backreferences
  PCRE2_MULTILINE          ^ and $ match newlines within data
  PCRE2_NEVER_BACKSLASH_C  Lock out the use of \C in patterns
  PCRE2_NEVER_UCP          Lock out PCRE2_UCP, e.g. via (*UCP)
  PCRE2_NEVER_UTF          Lock out PCRE2_UTF, e.g. via (*UTF)
  PCRE2_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE    Disable numbered capturing paren-
                            theses (named ones available)
  PCRE2_NO_AUTO_POSSESS    Disable auto-possessification
  PCRE2_NO_DOTSTAR_ANCHOR  Disable automatic anchoring for .*
  PCRE2_NO_START_OPTIMIZE  Disable match-time start optimizations
  PCRE2_NO_UTF_CHECK       Do not check the pattern for UTF validity
                             (only relevant if PCRE2_UTF is set)
  PCRE2_UCP                Use Unicode properties for \d, \w, etc.
  PCRE2_UNGREEDY           Invert greediness of quantifiers
  PCRE2_USE_OFFSET_LIMIT   Enable offset limit for unanchored matching
  PCRE2_UTF                Treat pattern and subjects as UTF strings
</pre>
PCRE2 must be built with Unicode support (the default) in order to use
PCRE2_UTF, PCRE2_UCP and related options.
</P>
<P>
The yield of the function is a pointer to a private data structure that
contains the compiled pattern, or NULL if an error was detected.
</P>
<P>
There is a complete description of the PCRE2 native API, with more detail on
each option, in the
<a href="pcre2api.html"><b>pcre2api</b></a>
page, and a description of the POSIX API in the
<a href="pcre2posix.html"><b>pcre2posix</b></a>
page.
<p>
Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE2 index page</a>.
</p>
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