Introduction to Library Functions                   PCRESAMPLE(3)



NAME
     PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions

PCRE SAMPLE PROGRAM

     A simple, complete demonstration program, to get you started
     with  using  PCRE, is supplied in the file pcredemo.c in the
     PCRE distribution.

     The program compiles the  regular  expression  that  is  its
     first argument, and matches it against the subject string in
     its second argument. No PCRE options are  set,  and  default
     character tables are used. If matching succeeds, the program
     outputs the portion of the subject  that  matched,  together
     with the contents of any captured substrings.

     If the -g option is given on the command line,  the  program
     then  goes on to check for further matches of the same regu-
     lar expression in the same subject string. The  logic  is  a
     little  bit tricky because of the possibility of matching an
     empty string. Comments in the code explain what is going on.

     If PCRE is installed in the  standard  include  and  library
     directories  for  your system, you should be able to compile
     the demonstration program using this command:

       gcc -o pcredemo pcredemo.c -lpcre

     If PCRE is installed elsewhere, you may need  to  add  addi-
     tional  options to the command line. For example, on a Unix-
     like system that has PCRE installed in /usr/local,  you  can
     compile the demonstration program using a command like this:

       gcc -o pcredemo -I/usr/local/include pcredemo.c \
           -L/usr/local/lib -lpcre

     Once you have compiled the demonstration  program,  you  can
     run simple tests like this:

       ./pcredemo 'catdog' 'the cat sat on the mat'
       ./pcredemo -g 'catdog' 'the dog sat on the cat'

     Note that there is a much more comprehensive  test  program,
     called  pcretest,  which  supports  many more facilities for
     testing  regular  expressions  and  the  PCRE  library.  The
     pcredemo program is provided as a simple coding example.

     On some operating systems (e.g. Solaris), when PCRE  is  not
     installed  in the standard library directory, you may get an
     error like this when you try to run pcredemo:

       ld.so.1: a.out: fatal: libpcre.so.0: open failed: No  such



SunOS 5.10                Last change:                          1






Introduction to Library Functions                   PCRESAMPLE(3)



     file or directory

     This is caused by the way shared library  support  works  on
     those systems. You need to add

       -R/usr/local/lib

     (for example) to the compile command to get round this prob-
     lem.

AUTHOR

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

REVISION

     Last updated: 23 January 2008
     Copyright (c) 1997-2008 University of Cambridge.

ATRIBUTES
     See attributes(5) for descriptions of the  following  attri-
     butes:

     
       ATRIBUTE TYPE     ATRIBUTE VALUE
    
     Availability         SUNWpcre       
    
     Interface Stability  Uncommitted    
    

NOTES
     Source for PCRE is available on http:/opensolaris.org.




















SunOS 5.10                Last change:                          2