Annotation of embedaddon/pcre/README, revision 1.1.1.3

1.1       misho       1: README file for PCRE (Perl-compatible regular expression library)
                      2: -----------------------------------------------------------------
                      3: 
                      4: The latest release of PCRE is always available in three alternative formats
                      5: from:
                      6: 
                      7:   ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.tar.gz
                      8:   ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.tar.bz2
                      9:   ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.zip
                     10: 
                     11: There is a mailing list for discussion about the development of PCRE at
                     12: 
                     13:   pcre-dev@exim.org
                     14: 
                     15: Please read the NEWS file if you are upgrading from a previous release.
                     16: The contents of this README file are:
                     17: 
                     18:   The PCRE APIs
                     19:   Documentation for PCRE
                     20:   Contributions by users of PCRE
1.1.1.3 ! misho      21:   Building PCRE on non-Unix-like systems
        !            22:   Building PCRE without using autotools
        !            23:   Building PCRE using autotools
        !            24:   Retrieving configuration information
        !            25:   Shared libraries
        !            26:   Cross-compiling using autotools
1.1       misho      27:   Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)
                     28:   Using PCRE from MySQL
                     29:   Making new tarballs
                     30:   Testing PCRE
                     31:   Character tables
                     32:   File manifest
                     33: 
                     34: 
                     35: The PCRE APIs
                     36: -------------
                     37: 
1.1.1.2   misho      38: PCRE is written in C, and it has its own API. There are two sets of functions,
                     39: one for the 8-bit library, which processes strings of bytes, and one for the
                     40: 16-bit library, which processes strings of 16-bit values. The distribution also
                     41: includes a set of C++ wrapper functions (see the pcrecpp man page for details),
                     42: courtesy of Google Inc., which can be used to call the 8-bit PCRE library from
                     43: C++.
                     44: 
                     45: In addition, there is a set of C wrapper functions (again, just for the 8-bit
                     46: library) that are based on the POSIX regular expression API (see the pcreposix
                     47: man page). These end up in the library called libpcreposix. Note that this just
                     48: provides a POSIX calling interface to PCRE; the regular expressions themselves
                     49: still follow Perl syntax and semantics. The POSIX API is restricted, and does
                     50: not give full access to all of PCRE's facilities.
1.1       misho      51: 
                     52: The header file for the POSIX-style functions is called pcreposix.h. The
                     53: official POSIX name is regex.h, but I did not want to risk possible problems
                     54: with existing files of that name by distributing it that way. To use PCRE with
                     55: an existing program that uses the POSIX API, pcreposix.h will have to be
                     56: renamed or pointed at by a link.
                     57: 
                     58: If you are using the POSIX interface to PCRE and there is already a POSIX regex
                     59: library installed on your system, as well as worrying about the regex.h header
                     60: file (as mentioned above), you must also take care when linking programs to
                     61: ensure that they link with PCRE's libpcreposix library. Otherwise they may pick
                     62: up the POSIX functions of the same name from the other library.
                     63: 
                     64: One way of avoiding this confusion is to compile PCRE with the addition of
                     65: -Dregcomp=PCREregcomp (and similarly for the other POSIX functions) to the
                     66: compiler flags (CFLAGS if you are using "configure" -- see below). This has the
                     67: effect of renaming the functions so that the names no longer clash. Of course,
                     68: you have to do the same thing for your applications, or write them using the
                     69: new names.
                     70: 
                     71: 
                     72: Documentation for PCRE
                     73: ----------------------
                     74: 
                     75: If you install PCRE in the normal way on a Unix-like system, you will end up
                     76: with a set of man pages whose names all start with "pcre". The one that is just
                     77: called "pcre" lists all the others. In addition to these man pages, the PCRE
                     78: documentation is supplied in two other forms:
                     79: 
                     80:   1. There are files called doc/pcre.txt, doc/pcregrep.txt, and
                     81:      doc/pcretest.txt in the source distribution. The first of these is a
                     82:      concatenation of the text forms of all the section 3 man pages except
                     83:      those that summarize individual functions. The other two are the text
                     84:      forms of the section 1 man pages for the pcregrep and pcretest commands.
                     85:      These text forms are provided for ease of scanning with text editors or
                     86:      similar tools. They are installed in <prefix>/share/doc/pcre, where
                     87:      <prefix> is the installation prefix (defaulting to /usr/local).
                     88: 
                     89:   2. A set of files containing all the documentation in HTML form, hyperlinked
                     90:      in various ways, and rooted in a file called index.html, is distributed in
                     91:      doc/html and installed in <prefix>/share/doc/pcre/html.
                     92: 
                     93: Users of PCRE have contributed files containing the documentation for various
                     94: releases in CHM format. These can be found in the Contrib directory of the FTP
                     95: site (see next section).
                     96: 
                     97: 
                     98: Contributions by users of PCRE
                     99: ------------------------------
                    100: 
                    101: You can find contributions from PCRE users in the directory
                    102: 
                    103:   ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/Contrib
                    104: 
                    105: There is a README file giving brief descriptions of what they are. Some are
                    106: complete in themselves; others are pointers to URLs containing relevant files.
                    107: Some of this material is likely to be well out-of-date. Several of the earlier
                    108: contributions provided support for compiling PCRE on various flavours of
                    109: Windows (I myself do not use Windows). Nowadays there is more Windows support
                    110: in the standard distribution, so these contibutions have been archived.
                    111: 
                    112: 
1.1.1.3 ! misho     113: Building PCRE on non-Unix-like systems
        !           114: --------------------------------------
1.1       misho     115: 
1.1.1.3 ! misho     116: For a non-Unix-like system, please read the comments in the file
        !           117: NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD, though if your system supports the use of "configure" and
        !           118: "make" you may be able to build PCRE using autotools in the same way as for
        !           119: many Unix-like systems.
        !           120: 
        !           121: PCRE can also be configured using the GUI facility provided by CMake's
        !           122: cmake-gui command. This creates Makefiles, solution files, etc. The file
        !           123: NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD has information about CMake.
1.1       misho     124: 
                    125: PCRE has been compiled on many different operating systems. It should be
                    126: straightforward to build PCRE on any system that has a Standard C compiler and
                    127: library, because it uses only Standard C functions.
                    128: 
                    129: 
1.1.1.3 ! misho     130: Building PCRE without using autotools
        !           131: -------------------------------------
        !           132: 
        !           133: The use of autotools (in particular, libtool) is problematic in some
        !           134: environments, even some that are Unix or Unix-like. See the NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD
        !           135: file for ways of building PCRE without using autotools.
        !           136: 
        !           137: 
        !           138: Building PCRE using autotools
        !           139: -----------------------------
1.1       misho     140: 
                    141: If you are using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC), please see the special note
                    142: in the section entitled "Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)" below.
                    143: 
1.1.1.3 ! misho     144: The following instructions assume the use of the widely used "configure; make;
        !           145: make install" (autotools) process.
        !           146: 
        !           147: To build PCRE on system that supports autotools, first run the "configure"
        !           148: command from the PCRE distribution directory, with your current directory set
        !           149: to the directory where you want the files to be created. This command is a
        !           150: standard GNU "autoconf" configuration script, for which generic instructions
        !           151: are supplied in the file INSTALL.
1.1       misho     152: 
                    153: Most commonly, people build PCRE within its own distribution directory, and in
                    154: this case, on many systems, just running "./configure" is sufficient. However,
                    155: the usual methods of changing standard defaults are available. For example:
                    156: 
                    157: CFLAGS='-O2 -Wall' ./configure --prefix=/opt/local
                    158: 
1.1.1.2   misho     159: This command specifies that the C compiler should be run with the flags '-O2
                    160: -Wall' instead of the default, and that "make install" should install PCRE
                    161: under /opt/local instead of the default /usr/local.
1.1       misho     162: 
                    163: If you want to build in a different directory, just run "configure" with that
                    164: directory as current. For example, suppose you have unpacked the PCRE source
                    165: into /source/pcre/pcre-xxx, but you want to build it in /build/pcre/pcre-xxx:
                    166: 
                    167: cd /build/pcre/pcre-xxx
                    168: /source/pcre/pcre-xxx/configure
                    169: 
                    170: PCRE is written in C and is normally compiled as a C library. However, it is
                    171: possible to build it as a C++ library, though the provided building apparatus
                    172: does not have any features to support this.
                    173: 
                    174: There are some optional features that can be included or omitted from the PCRE
                    175: library. They are also documented in the pcrebuild man page.
                    176: 
                    177: . By default, both shared and static libraries are built. You can change this
                    178:   by adding one of these options to the "configure" command:
                    179: 
                    180:   --disable-shared
                    181:   --disable-static
                    182: 
                    183:   (See also "Shared libraries on Unix-like systems" below.)
                    184: 
1.1.1.2   misho     185: . By default, only the 8-bit library is built. If you add --enable-pcre16 to
                    186:   the "configure" command, the 16-bit library is also built. If you want only
                    187:   the 16-bit library, use "./configure --enable-pcre16 --disable-pcre8".
                    188: 
                    189: . If you are building the 8-bit library and want to suppress the building of
                    190:   the C++ wrapper library, you can add --disable-cpp to the "configure"
                    191:   command. Otherwise, when "configure" is run without --disable-pcre8, it will
                    192:   try to find a C++ compiler and C++ header files, and if it succeeds, it will
                    193:   try to build the C++ wrapper.
1.1       misho     194: 
                    195: . If you want to include support for just-in-time compiling, which can give
                    196:   large performance improvements on certain platforms, add --enable-jit to the
                    197:   "configure" command. This support is available only for certain hardware
                    198:   architectures. If you try to enable it on an unsupported architecture, there
                    199:   will be a compile time error.
                    200: 
                    201: . When JIT support is enabled, pcregrep automatically makes use of it, unless
                    202:   you add --disable-pcregrep-jit to the "configure" command.
                    203: 
                    204: . If you want to make use of the support for UTF-8 Unicode character strings in
1.1.1.2   misho     205:   the 8-bit library, or UTF-16 Unicode character strings in the 16-bit library,
                    206:   you must add --enable-utf to the "configure" command. Without it, the code
                    207:   for handling UTF-8 and UTF-16 is not included in the relevant library. Even
                    208:   when --enable-utf is included, the use of a UTF encoding still has to be
                    209:   enabled by an option at run time. When PCRE is compiled with this option, its
                    210:   input can only either be ASCII or UTF-8/16, even when running on EBCDIC
                    211:   platforms. It is not possible to use both --enable-utf and --enable-ebcdic at
                    212:   the same time.
                    213: 
                    214: . There are no separate options for enabling UTF-8 and UTF-16 independently
                    215:   because that would allow ridiculous settings such as requesting UTF-16
                    216:   support while building only the 8-bit library. However, the option
                    217:   --enable-utf8 is retained for backwards compatibility with earlier releases
                    218:   that did not support 16-bit character strings. It is synonymous with
                    219:   --enable-utf. It is not possible to configure one library with UTF support
                    220:   and the other without in the same configuration.
                    221: 
                    222: . If, in addition to support for UTF-8/16 character strings, you want to
                    223:   include support for the \P, \p, and \X sequences that recognize Unicode
                    224:   character properties, you must add --enable-unicode-properties to the
                    225:   "configure" command. This adds about 30K to the size of the library (in the
                    226:   form of a property table); only the basic two-letter properties such as Lu
                    227:   are supported.
1.1       misho     228: 
                    229: . You can build PCRE to recognize either CR or LF or the sequence CRLF or any
                    230:   of the preceding, or any of the Unicode newline sequences as indicating the
                    231:   end of a line. Whatever you specify at build time is the default; the caller
                    232:   of PCRE can change the selection at run time. The default newline indicator
                    233:   is a single LF character (the Unix standard). You can specify the default
                    234:   newline indicator by adding --enable-newline-is-cr or --enable-newline-is-lf
                    235:   or --enable-newline-is-crlf or --enable-newline-is-anycrlf or
                    236:   --enable-newline-is-any to the "configure" command, respectively.
                    237: 
                    238:   If you specify --enable-newline-is-cr or --enable-newline-is-crlf, some of
                    239:   the standard tests will fail, because the lines in the test files end with
                    240:   LF. Even if the files are edited to change the line endings, there are likely
                    241:   to be some failures. With --enable-newline-is-anycrlf or
                    242:   --enable-newline-is-any, many tests should succeed, but there may be some
                    243:   failures.
                    244: 
                    245: . By default, the sequence \R in a pattern matches any Unicode line ending
                    246:   sequence. This is independent of the option specifying what PCRE considers to
                    247:   be the end of a line (see above). However, the caller of PCRE can restrict \R
                    248:   to match only CR, LF, or CRLF. You can make this the default by adding
                    249:   --enable-bsr-anycrlf to the "configure" command (bsr = "backslash R").
                    250: 
                    251: . When called via the POSIX interface, PCRE uses malloc() to get additional
                    252:   storage for processing capturing parentheses if there are more than 10 of
                    253:   them in a pattern. You can increase this threshold by setting, for example,
                    254: 
                    255:   --with-posix-malloc-threshold=20
                    256: 
                    257:   on the "configure" command.
                    258: 
                    259: . PCRE has a counter that can be set to limit the amount of resources it uses.
                    260:   If the limit is exceeded during a match, the match fails. The default is ten
                    261:   million. You can change the default by setting, for example,
                    262: 
                    263:   --with-match-limit=500000
                    264: 
                    265:   on the "configure" command. This is just the default; individual calls to
                    266:   pcre_exec() can supply their own value. There is more discussion on the
                    267:   pcreapi man page.
                    268: 
                    269: . There is a separate counter that limits the depth of recursive function calls
                    270:   during a matching process. This also has a default of ten million, which is
                    271:   essentially "unlimited". You can change the default by setting, for example,
                    272: 
                    273:   --with-match-limit-recursion=500000
                    274: 
                    275:   Recursive function calls use up the runtime stack; running out of stack can
                    276:   cause programs to crash in strange ways. There is a discussion about stack
                    277:   sizes in the pcrestack man page.
                    278: 
                    279: . The default maximum compiled pattern size is around 64K. You can increase
1.1.1.2   misho     280:   this by adding --with-link-size=3 to the "configure" command. In the 8-bit
                    281:   library, PCRE then uses three bytes instead of two for offsets to different
                    282:   parts of the compiled pattern. In the 16-bit library, --with-link-size=3 is
                    283:   the same as --with-link-size=4, which (in both libraries) uses four-byte
                    284:   offsets. Increasing the internal link size reduces performance.
1.1       misho     285: 
                    286: . You can build PCRE so that its internal match() function that is called from
                    287:   pcre_exec() does not call itself recursively. Instead, it uses memory blocks
                    288:   obtained from the heap via the special functions pcre_stack_malloc() and
                    289:   pcre_stack_free() to save data that would otherwise be saved on the stack. To
                    290:   build PCRE like this, use
                    291: 
                    292:   --disable-stack-for-recursion
                    293: 
                    294:   on the "configure" command. PCRE runs more slowly in this mode, but it may be
                    295:   necessary in environments with limited stack sizes. This applies only to the
                    296:   normal execution of the pcre_exec() function; if JIT support is being
                    297:   successfully used, it is not relevant. Equally, it does not apply to
                    298:   pcre_dfa_exec(), which does not use deeply nested recursion. There is a
                    299:   discussion about stack sizes in the pcrestack man page.
                    300: 
                    301: . For speed, PCRE uses four tables for manipulating and identifying characters
                    302:   whose code point values are less than 256. By default, it uses a set of
                    303:   tables for ASCII encoding that is part of the distribution. If you specify
                    304: 
                    305:   --enable-rebuild-chartables
                    306: 
                    307:   a program called dftables is compiled and run in the default C locale when
                    308:   you obey "make". It builds a source file called pcre_chartables.c. If you do
                    309:   not specify this option, pcre_chartables.c is created as a copy of
                    310:   pcre_chartables.c.dist. See "Character tables" below for further information.
                    311: 
                    312: . It is possible to compile PCRE for use on systems that use EBCDIC as their
                    313:   character code (as opposed to ASCII) by specifying
                    314: 
                    315:   --enable-ebcdic
                    316: 
                    317:   This automatically implies --enable-rebuild-chartables (see above). However,
                    318:   when PCRE is built this way, it always operates in EBCDIC. It cannot support
1.1.1.2   misho     319:   both EBCDIC and UTF-8/16.
1.1       misho     320: 
1.1.1.2   misho     321: . The pcregrep program currently supports only 8-bit data files, and so
                    322:   requires the 8-bit PCRE library. It is possible to compile pcregrep to use
                    323:   libz and/or libbz2, in order to read .gz and .bz2 files (respectively), by
                    324:   specifying one or both of
1.1       misho     325: 
                    326:   --enable-pcregrep-libz
                    327:   --enable-pcregrep-libbz2
                    328: 
                    329:   Of course, the relevant libraries must be installed on your system.
                    330: 
                    331: . The default size of internal buffer used by pcregrep can be set by, for
                    332:   example:
                    333: 
                    334:   --with-pcregrep-bufsize=50K
                    335: 
                    336:   The default value is 20K.
                    337: 
                    338: . It is possible to compile pcretest so that it links with the libreadline
1.1.1.3 ! misho     339:   or libedit libraries, by specifying, respectively,
1.1       misho     340: 
1.1.1.3 ! misho     341:   --enable-pcretest-libreadline or --enable-pcretest-libedit
1.1       misho     342: 
                    343:   If this is done, when pcretest's input is from a terminal, it reads it using
                    344:   the readline() function. This provides line-editing and history facilities.
                    345:   Note that libreadline is GPL-licenced, so if you distribute a binary of
1.1.1.3 ! misho     346:   pcretest linked in this way, there may be licensing issues. These can be
        !           347:   avoided by linking with libedit (which has a BSD licence) instead.
1.1       misho     348: 
1.1.1.3 ! misho     349:   Enabling libreadline causes the -lreadline option to be added to the pcretest
1.1       misho     350:   build. In many operating environments with a sytem-installed readline
                    351:   library this is sufficient. However, in some environments (e.g. if an
                    352:   unmodified distribution version of readline is in use), it may be necessary
                    353:   to specify something like LIBS="-lncurses" as well. This is because, to quote
                    354:   the readline INSTALL, "Readline uses the termcap functions, but does not link
                    355:   with the termcap or curses library itself, allowing applications which link
                    356:   with readline the to choose an appropriate library." If you get error
                    357:   messages about missing functions tgetstr, tgetent, tputs, tgetflag, or tgoto,
                    358:   this is the problem, and linking with the ncurses library should fix it.
                    359: 
                    360: The "configure" script builds the following files for the basic C library:
                    361: 
                    362: . Makefile             the makefile that builds the library
                    363: . config.h             build-time configuration options for the library
                    364: . pcre.h               the public PCRE header file
                    365: . pcre-config          script that shows the building settings such as CFLAGS
                    366:                          that were set for "configure"
                    367: . libpcre.pc         ) data for the pkg-config command
1.1.1.2   misho     368: . libpcre16.pc       )
1.1       misho     369: . libpcreposix.pc    )
                    370: . libtool              script that builds shared and/or static libraries
                    371: 
                    372: Versions of config.h and pcre.h are distributed in the PCRE tarballs under the
                    373: names config.h.generic and pcre.h.generic. These are provided for those who
                    374: have to built PCRE without using "configure" or CMake. If you use "configure"
                    375: or CMake, the .generic versions are not used.
                    376: 
1.1.1.2   misho     377: When building the 8-bit library, if a C++ compiler is found, the following
                    378: files are also built:
1.1       misho     379: 
                    380: . libpcrecpp.pc        data for the pkg-config command
                    381: . pcrecpparg.h         header file for calling PCRE via the C++ wrapper
                    382: . pcre_stringpiece.h   header for the C++ "stringpiece" functions
                    383: 
                    384: The "configure" script also creates config.status, which is an executable
                    385: script that can be run to recreate the configuration, and config.log, which
                    386: contains compiler output from tests that "configure" runs.
                    387: 
1.1.1.2   misho     388: Once "configure" has run, you can run "make". This builds either or both of the
                    389: libraries libpcre and libpcre16, and a test program called pcretest. If you
                    390: enabled JIT support with --enable-jit, a test program called pcre_jit_test is
                    391: built as well.
                    392: 
                    393: If the 8-bit library is built, libpcreposix and the pcregrep command are also
                    394: built, and if a C++ compiler was found on your system, and you did not disable
                    395: it with --disable-cpp, "make" builds the C++ wrapper library, which is called
                    396: libpcrecpp, as well as some test programs called pcrecpp_unittest,
                    397: pcre_scanner_unittest, and pcre_stringpiece_unittest.
1.1       misho     398: 
                    399: The command "make check" runs all the appropriate tests. Details of the PCRE
                    400: tests are given below in a separate section of this document.
                    401: 
                    402: You can use "make install" to install PCRE into live directories on your
                    403: system. The following are installed (file names are all relative to the
                    404: <prefix> that is set when "configure" is run):
                    405: 
                    406:   Commands (bin):
                    407:     pcretest
1.1.1.2   misho     408:     pcregrep (if 8-bit support is enabled)
1.1       misho     409:     pcre-config
                    410: 
                    411:   Libraries (lib):
1.1.1.2   misho     412:     libpcre16     (if 16-bit support is enabled)
                    413:     libpcre       (if 8-bit support is enabled)
                    414:     libpcreposix  (if 8-bit support is enabled)
                    415:     libpcrecpp    (if 8-bit and C++ support is enabled)
1.1       misho     416: 
                    417:   Configuration information (lib/pkgconfig):
1.1.1.2   misho     418:     libpcre16.pc
1.1       misho     419:     libpcre.pc
                    420:     libpcreposix.pc
                    421:     libpcrecpp.pc (if C++ support is enabled)
                    422: 
                    423:   Header files (include):
                    424:     pcre.h
                    425:     pcreposix.h
                    426:     pcre_scanner.h      )
                    427:     pcre_stringpiece.h  ) if C++ support is enabled
                    428:     pcrecpp.h           )
                    429:     pcrecpparg.h        )
                    430: 
                    431:   Man pages (share/man/man{1,3}):
                    432:     pcregrep.1
                    433:     pcretest.1
                    434:     pcre-config.1
                    435:     pcre.3
                    436:     pcre*.3 (lots more pages, all starting "pcre")
                    437: 
                    438:   HTML documentation (share/doc/pcre/html):
                    439:     index.html
                    440:     *.html (lots more pages, hyperlinked from index.html)
                    441: 
                    442:   Text file documentation (share/doc/pcre):
                    443:     AUTHORS
                    444:     COPYING
                    445:     ChangeLog
                    446:     LICENCE
                    447:     NEWS
                    448:     README
                    449:     pcre.txt         (a concatenation of the man(3) pages)
                    450:     pcretest.txt     the pcretest man page
                    451:     pcregrep.txt     the pcregrep man page
                    452:     pcre-config.txt  the pcre-config man page
                    453: 
                    454: If you want to remove PCRE from your system, you can run "make uninstall".
                    455: This removes all the files that "make install" installed. However, it does not
                    456: remove any directories, because these are often shared with other programs.
                    457: 
                    458: 
1.1.1.3 ! misho     459: Retrieving configuration information
        !           460: ------------------------------------
1.1       misho     461: 
                    462: Running "make install" installs the command pcre-config, which can be used to
                    463: recall information about the PCRE configuration and installation. For example:
                    464: 
                    465:   pcre-config --version
                    466: 
                    467: prints the version number, and
                    468: 
                    469:   pcre-config --libs
                    470: 
                    471: outputs information about where the library is installed. This command can be
                    472: included in makefiles for programs that use PCRE, saving the programmer from
                    473: having to remember too many details.
                    474: 
                    475: The pkg-config command is another system for saving and retrieving information
                    476: about installed libraries. Instead of separate commands for each library, a
                    477: single command is used. For example:
                    478: 
                    479:   pkg-config --cflags pcre
                    480: 
                    481: The data is held in *.pc files that are installed in a directory called
                    482: <prefix>/lib/pkgconfig.
                    483: 
                    484: 
1.1.1.3 ! misho     485: Shared libraries
        !           486: ----------------
1.1       misho     487: 
                    488: The default distribution builds PCRE as shared libraries and static libraries,
                    489: as long as the operating system supports shared libraries. Shared library
                    490: support relies on the "libtool" script which is built as part of the
                    491: "configure" process.
                    492: 
                    493: The libtool script is used to compile and link both shared and static
                    494: libraries. They are placed in a subdirectory called .libs when they are newly
                    495: built. The programs pcretest and pcregrep are built to use these uninstalled
                    496: libraries (by means of wrapper scripts in the case of shared libraries). When
                    497: you use "make install" to install shared libraries, pcregrep and pcretest are
                    498: automatically re-built to use the newly installed shared libraries before being
                    499: installed themselves. However, the versions left in the build directory still
                    500: use the uninstalled libraries.
                    501: 
                    502: To build PCRE using static libraries only you must use --disable-shared when
                    503: configuring it. For example:
                    504: 
                    505: ./configure --prefix=/usr/gnu --disable-shared
                    506: 
                    507: Then run "make" in the usual way. Similarly, you can use --disable-static to
                    508: build only shared libraries.
                    509: 
                    510: 
1.1.1.3 ! misho     511: Cross-compiling using autotools
        !           512: -------------------------------
1.1       misho     513: 
                    514: You can specify CC and CFLAGS in the normal way to the "configure" command, in
                    515: order to cross-compile PCRE for some other host. However, you should NOT
                    516: specify --enable-rebuild-chartables, because if you do, the dftables.c source
                    517: file is compiled and run on the local host, in order to generate the inbuilt
                    518: character tables (the pcre_chartables.c file). This will probably not work,
                    519: because dftables.c needs to be compiled with the local compiler, not the cross
                    520: compiler.
                    521: 
                    522: When --enable-rebuild-chartables is not specified, pcre_chartables.c is created
                    523: by making a copy of pcre_chartables.c.dist, which is a default set of tables
                    524: that assumes ASCII code. Cross-compiling with the default tables should not be
                    525: a problem.
                    526: 
                    527: If you need to modify the character tables when cross-compiling, you should
                    528: move pcre_chartables.c.dist out of the way, then compile dftables.c by hand and
                    529: run it on the local host to make a new version of pcre_chartables.c.dist.
                    530: Then when you cross-compile PCRE this new version of the tables will be used.
                    531: 
                    532: 
                    533: Using HP's ANSI C++ compiler (aCC)
                    534: ----------------------------------
                    535: 
                    536: Unless C++ support is disabled by specifying the "--disable-cpp" option of the
                    537: "configure" script, you must include the "-AA" option in the CXXFLAGS
                    538: environment variable in order for the C++ components to compile correctly.
                    539: 
                    540: Also, note that the aCC compiler on PA-RISC platforms may have a defect whereby
                    541: needed libraries fail to get included when specifying the "-AA" compiler
                    542: option. If you experience unresolved symbols when linking the C++ programs,
                    543: use the workaround of specifying the following environment variable prior to
                    544: running the "configure" script:
                    545: 
                    546:   CXXLDFLAGS="-lstd_v2 -lCsup_v2"
                    547: 
                    548: 
                    549: Using Sun's compilers for Solaris
                    550: ---------------------------------
                    551: 
                    552: A user reports that the following configurations work on Solaris 9 sparcv9 and
                    553: Solaris 9 x86 (32-bit):
                    554: 
                    555:   Solaris 9 sparcv9: ./configure --disable-cpp CC=/bin/cc CFLAGS="-m64 -g"
                    556:   Solaris 9 x86:     ./configure --disable-cpp CC=/bin/cc CFLAGS="-g"
                    557: 
                    558: 
                    559: Using PCRE from MySQL
                    560: ---------------------
                    561: 
                    562: On systems where both PCRE and MySQL are installed, it is possible to make use
                    563: of PCRE from within MySQL, as an alternative to the built-in pattern matching.
                    564: There is a web page that tells you how to do this:
                    565: 
                    566:   http://www.mysqludf.org/lib_mysqludf_preg/index.php
                    567: 
                    568: 
                    569: Making new tarballs
                    570: -------------------
                    571: 
                    572: The command "make dist" creates three PCRE tarballs, in tar.gz, tar.bz2, and
                    573: zip formats. The command "make distcheck" does the same, but then does a trial
                    574: build of the new distribution to ensure that it works.
                    575: 
                    576: If you have modified any of the man page sources in the doc directory, you
                    577: should first run the PrepareRelease script before making a distribution. This
                    578: script creates the .txt and HTML forms of the documentation from the man pages.
                    579: 
                    580: 
                    581: Testing PCRE
                    582: ------------
                    583: 
1.1.1.3 ! misho     584: To test the basic PCRE library on a Unix-like system, run the RunTest script.
        !           585: There is another script called RunGrepTest that tests the options of the
        !           586: pcregrep command. If the C++ wrapper library is built, three test programs
        !           587: called pcrecpp_unittest, pcre_scanner_unittest, and pcre_stringpiece_unittest
        !           588: are also built. When JIT support is enabled, another test program called
        !           589: pcre_jit_test is built.
1.1       misho     590: 
                    591: Both the scripts and all the program tests are run if you obey "make check" or
1.1.1.3 ! misho     592: "make test". For other environments, see the instructions in
        !           593: NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD.
1.1       misho     594: 
                    595: The RunTest script runs the pcretest test program (which is documented in its
                    596: own man page) on each of the relevant testinput files in the testdata
                    597: directory, and compares the output with the contents of the corresponding
                    598: testoutput files. Some tests are relevant only when certain build-time options
1.1.1.2   misho     599: were selected. For example, the tests for UTF-8/16 support are run only if
                    600: --enable-utf was used. RunTest outputs a comment when it skips a test.
1.1       misho     601: 
                    602: Many of the tests that are not skipped are run up to three times. The second
                    603: run forces pcre_study() to be called for all patterns except for a few in some
                    604: tests that are marked "never study" (see the pcretest program for how this is
                    605: done). If JIT support is available, the non-DFA tests are run a third time,
                    606: this time with a forced pcre_study() with the PCRE_STUDY_JIT_COMPILE option.
                    607: 
1.1.1.2   misho     608: When both 8-bit and 16-bit support is enabled, the entire set of tests is run
                    609: twice, once for each library. If you want to run just one set of tests, call
                    610: RunTest with either the -8 or -16 option.
                    611: 
                    612: RunTest uses a file called testtry to hold the main output from pcretest.
                    613: Other files whose names begin with "test" are used as working files in some
                    614: tests. To run pcretest on just one or more specific test files, give their
                    615: numbers as arguments to RunTest, for example:
1.1       misho     616: 
1.1.1.2   misho     617:   RunTest 2 7 11
1.1       misho     618: 
1.1.1.3 ! misho     619: You can also call RunTest with the single argument "list" to cause it to output
        !           620: a list of tests.
        !           621: 
1.1       misho     622: The first test file can be fed directly into the perltest.pl script to check
                    623: that Perl gives the same results. The only difference you should see is in the
                    624: first few lines, where the Perl version is given instead of the PCRE version.
                    625: 
1.1.1.2   misho     626: The second set of tests check pcre_fullinfo(), pcre_study(),
1.1       misho     627: pcre_copy_substring(), pcre_get_substring(), pcre_get_substring_list(), error
                    628: detection, and run-time flags that are specific to PCRE, as well as the POSIX
                    629: wrapper API. It also uses the debugging flags to check some of the internals of
                    630: pcre_compile().
                    631: 
                    632: If you build PCRE with a locale setting that is not the standard C locale, the
                    633: character tables may be different (see next paragraph). In some cases, this may
                    634: cause failures in the second set of tests. For example, in a locale where the
                    635: isprint() function yields TRUE for characters in the range 128-255, the use of
                    636: [:isascii:] inside a character class defines a different set of characters, and
                    637: this shows up in this test as a difference in the compiled code, which is being
                    638: listed for checking. Where the comparison test output contains [\x00-\x7f] the
                    639: test will contain [\x00-\xff], and similarly in some other cases. This is not a
                    640: bug in PCRE.
                    641: 
                    642: The third set of tests checks pcre_maketables(), the facility for building a
                    643: set of character tables for a specific locale and using them instead of the
                    644: default tables. The tests make use of the "fr_FR" (French) locale. Before
                    645: running the test, the script checks for the presence of this locale by running
                    646: the "locale" command. If that command fails, or if it doesn't include "fr_FR"
                    647: in the list of available locales, the third test cannot be run, and a comment
                    648: is output to say why. If running this test produces instances of the error
                    649: 
                    650:   ** Failed to set locale "fr_FR"
                    651: 
                    652: in the comparison output, it means that locale is not available on your system,
                    653: despite being listed by "locale". This does not mean that PCRE is broken.
                    654: 
                    655: [If you are trying to run this test on Windows, you may be able to get it to
                    656: work by changing "fr_FR" to "french" everywhere it occurs. Alternatively, use
                    657: RunTest.bat. The version of RunTest.bat included with PCRE 7.4 and above uses
                    658: Windows versions of test 2. More info on using RunTest.bat is included in the
                    659: document entitled NON-UNIX-USE.]
                    660: 
1.1.1.2   misho     661: The fourth and fifth tests check the UTF-8/16 support and error handling and
                    662: internal UTF features of PCRE that are not relevant to Perl, respectively. The
                    663: sixth and seventh tests do the same for Unicode character properties support.
                    664: 
                    665: The eighth, ninth, and tenth tests check the pcre_dfa_exec() alternative
                    666: matching function, in non-UTF-8/16 mode, UTF-8/16 mode, and UTF-8/16 mode with
                    667: Unicode property support, respectively.
1.1       misho     668: 
1.1.1.2   misho     669: The eleventh test checks some internal offsets and code size features; it is
                    670: run only when the default "link size" of 2 is set (in other cases the sizes
                    671: change) and when Unicode property support is enabled.
1.1       misho     672: 
1.1.1.2   misho     673: The twelfth test is run only when JIT support is available, and the thirteenth
                    674: test is run only when JIT support is not available. They test some JIT-specific
                    675: features such as information output from pcretest about JIT compilation.
                    676: 
                    677: The fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth tests are run only in 8-bit mode, and
                    678: the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth tests are run only in 16-bit mode.
                    679: These are tests that generate different output in the two modes. They are for
                    680: general cases, UTF-8/16 support, and Unicode property support, respectively.
1.1       misho     681: 
1.1.1.2   misho     682: The twentieth test is run only in 16-bit mode. It tests some specific 16-bit
                    683: features of the DFA matching engine.
1.1       misho     684: 
1.1.1.2   misho     685: The twenty-first and twenty-second tests are run only in 16-bit mode, when the
                    686: link size is set to 2. They test reloading pre-compiled patterns.
1.1       misho     687: 
                    688: 
                    689: Character tables
                    690: ----------------
                    691: 
                    692: For speed, PCRE uses four tables for manipulating and identifying characters
                    693: whose code point values are less than 256. The final argument of the
                    694: pcre_compile() function is a pointer to a block of memory containing the
                    695: concatenated tables. A call to pcre_maketables() can be used to generate a set
                    696: of tables in the current locale. If the final argument for pcre_compile() is
                    697: passed as NULL, a set of default tables that is built into the binary is used.
                    698: 
                    699: The source file called pcre_chartables.c contains the default set of tables. By
                    700: default, this is created as a copy of pcre_chartables.c.dist, which contains
                    701: tables for ASCII coding. However, if --enable-rebuild-chartables is specified
                    702: for ./configure, a different version of pcre_chartables.c is built by the
                    703: program dftables (compiled from dftables.c), which uses the ANSI C character
                    704: handling functions such as isalnum(), isalpha(), isupper(), islower(), etc. to
                    705: build the table sources. This means that the default C locale which is set for
                    706: your system will control the contents of these default tables. You can change
                    707: the default tables by editing pcre_chartables.c and then re-building PCRE. If
                    708: you do this, you should take care to ensure that the file does not get
                    709: automatically re-generated. The best way to do this is to move
                    710: pcre_chartables.c.dist out of the way and replace it with your customized
                    711: tables.
                    712: 
                    713: When the dftables program is run as a result of --enable-rebuild-chartables,
                    714: it uses the default C locale that is set on your system. It does not pay
                    715: attention to the LC_xxx environment variables. In other words, it uses the
                    716: system's default locale rather than whatever the compiling user happens to have
                    717: set. If you really do want to build a source set of character tables in a
                    718: locale that is specified by the LC_xxx variables, you can run the dftables
                    719: program by hand with the -L option. For example:
                    720: 
                    721:   ./dftables -L pcre_chartables.c.special
                    722: 
                    723: The first two 256-byte tables provide lower casing and case flipping functions,
                    724: respectively. The next table consists of three 32-byte bit maps which identify
                    725: digits, "word" characters, and white space, respectively. These are used when
                    726: building 32-byte bit maps that represent character classes for code points less
                    727: than 256.
                    728: 
                    729: The final 256-byte table has bits indicating various character types, as
                    730: follows:
                    731: 
                    732:     1   white space character
                    733:     2   letter
                    734:     4   decimal digit
                    735:     8   hexadecimal digit
                    736:    16   alphanumeric or '_'
                    737:   128   regular expression metacharacter or binary zero
                    738: 
                    739: You should not alter the set of characters that contain the 128 bit, as that
                    740: will cause PCRE to malfunction.
                    741: 
                    742: 
                    743: File manifest
                    744: -------------
                    745: 
1.1.1.2   misho     746: The distribution should contain the files listed below. Where a file name is
                    747: given as pcre[16]_xxx it means that there are two files, one with the name
                    748: pcre_xxx and the other with the name pcre16_xxx.
1.1       misho     749: 
                    750: (A) Source files of the PCRE library functions and their headers:
                    751: 
                    752:   dftables.c              auxiliary program for building pcre_chartables.c
                    753:                             when --enable-rebuild-chartables is specified
                    754: 
                    755:   pcre_chartables.c.dist  a default set of character tables that assume ASCII
                    756:                             coding; used, unless --enable-rebuild-chartables is
1.1.1.2   misho     757:                             specified, by copying to pcre[16]_chartables.c
1.1       misho     758: 
                    759:   pcreposix.c             )
1.1.1.2   misho     760:   pcre[16]_byte_order.c   )
                    761:   pcre[16]_compile.c      )
                    762:   pcre[16]_config.c       )
                    763:   pcre[16]_dfa_exec.c     )
                    764:   pcre[16]_exec.c         )
                    765:   pcre[16]_fullinfo.c     )
                    766:   pcre[16]_get.c          ) sources for the functions in the library,
                    767:   pcre[16]_globals.c      )   and some internal functions that they use
                    768:   pcre[16]_jit_compile.c  )
                    769:   pcre[16]_maketables.c   )
                    770:   pcre[16]_newline.c      )
                    771:   pcre[16]_refcount.c     )
                    772:   pcre[16]_string_utils.c )
                    773:   pcre[16]_study.c        )
                    774:   pcre[16]_tables.c       )
                    775:   pcre[16]_ucd.c          )
                    776:   pcre[16]_version.c      )
                    777:   pcre[16]_xclass.c       )
1.1       misho     778:   pcre_ord2utf8.c         )
                    779:   pcre_valid_utf8.c       )
1.1.1.2   misho     780:   pcre16_ord2utf16.c      )
                    781:   pcre16_utf16_utils.c    )
                    782:   pcre16_valid_utf16.c    )
                    783: 
                    784:   pcre[16]_printint.c     ) debugging function that is used by pcretest,
1.1       misho     785:                           )   and can also be #included in pcre_compile()
1.1.1.2   misho     786: 
1.1       misho     787:   pcre.h.in               template for pcre.h when built by "configure"
                    788:   pcreposix.h             header for the external POSIX wrapper API
                    789:   pcre_internal.h         header for internal use
                    790:   sljit/*                 16 files that make up the JIT compiler
                    791:   ucp.h                   header for Unicode property handling
                    792: 
                    793:   config.h.in             template for config.h, which is built by "configure"
                    794: 
                    795:   pcrecpp.h               public header file for the C++ wrapper
                    796:   pcrecpparg.h.in         template for another C++ header file
                    797:   pcre_scanner.h          public header file for C++ scanner functions
                    798:   pcrecpp.cc              )
                    799:   pcre_scanner.cc         ) source for the C++ wrapper library
                    800: 
                    801:   pcre_stringpiece.h.in   template for pcre_stringpiece.h, the header for the
                    802:                             C++ stringpiece functions
                    803:   pcre_stringpiece.cc     source for the C++ stringpiece functions
                    804: 
                    805: (B) Source files for programs that use PCRE:
                    806: 
                    807:   pcredemo.c              simple demonstration of coding calls to PCRE
                    808:   pcregrep.c              source of a grep utility that uses PCRE
                    809:   pcretest.c              comprehensive test program
                    810: 
                    811: (C) Auxiliary files:
                    812: 
                    813:   132html                 script to turn "man" pages into HTML
                    814:   AUTHORS                 information about the author of PCRE
                    815:   ChangeLog               log of changes to the code
                    816:   CleanTxt                script to clean nroff output for txt man pages
                    817:   Detrail                 script to remove trailing spaces
                    818:   HACKING                 some notes about the internals of PCRE
                    819:   INSTALL                 generic installation instructions
                    820:   LICENCE                 conditions for the use of PCRE
                    821:   COPYING                 the same, using GNU's standard name
                    822:   Makefile.in             ) template for Unix Makefile, which is built by
                    823:                           )   "configure"
                    824:   Makefile.am             ) the automake input that was used to create
                    825:                           )   Makefile.in
                    826:   NEWS                    important changes in this release
1.1.1.3 ! misho     827:   NON-UNIX-USE            the previous name for NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD
        !           828:   NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD     notes on building PCRE without using autotools
1.1       misho     829:   PrepareRelease          script to make preparations for "make dist"
                    830:   README                  this file
                    831:   RunTest                 a Unix shell script for running tests
                    832:   RunGrepTest             a Unix shell script for pcregrep tests
                    833:   aclocal.m4              m4 macros (generated by "aclocal")
                    834:   config.guess            ) files used by libtool,
                    835:   config.sub              )   used only when building a shared library
                    836:   configure               a configuring shell script (built by autoconf)
                    837:   configure.ac            ) the autoconf input that was used to build
                    838:                           )   "configure" and config.h
                    839:   depcomp                 ) script to find program dependencies, generated by
                    840:                           )   automake
                    841:   doc/*.3                 man page sources for PCRE
                    842:   doc/*.1                 man page sources for pcregrep and pcretest
                    843:   doc/index.html.src      the base HTML page
                    844:   doc/html/*              HTML documentation
                    845:   doc/pcre.txt            plain text version of the man pages
                    846:   doc/pcretest.txt        plain text documentation of test program
                    847:   doc/perltest.txt        plain text documentation of Perl test program
                    848:   install-sh              a shell script for installing files
1.1.1.2   misho     849:   libpcre16.pc.in         template for libpcre16.pc for pkg-config
1.1       misho     850:   libpcre.pc.in           template for libpcre.pc for pkg-config
                    851:   libpcreposix.pc.in      template for libpcreposix.pc for pkg-config
                    852:   libpcrecpp.pc.in        template for libpcrecpp.pc for pkg-config
                    853:   ltmain.sh               file used to build a libtool script
                    854:   missing                 ) common stub for a few missing GNU programs while
                    855:                           )   installing, generated by automake
                    856:   mkinstalldirs           script for making install directories
                    857:   perltest.pl             Perl test program
                    858:   pcre-config.in          source of script which retains PCRE information
                    859:   pcre_jit_test.c         test program for the JIT compiler
                    860:   pcrecpp_unittest.cc          )
                    861:   pcre_scanner_unittest.cc     ) test programs for the C++ wrapper
                    862:   pcre_stringpiece_unittest.cc )
                    863:   testdata/testinput*     test data for main library tests
                    864:   testdata/testoutput*    expected test results
                    865:   testdata/grep*          input and output for pcregrep tests
1.1.1.2   misho     866:   testdata/*              other supporting test files
1.1       misho     867: 
                    868: (D) Auxiliary files for cmake support
                    869: 
                    870:   cmake/COPYING-CMAKE-SCRIPTS
                    871:   cmake/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake
1.1.1.3 ! misho     872:   cmake/FindEditline.cmake
1.1       misho     873:   cmake/FindReadline.cmake
                    874:   CMakeLists.txt
                    875:   config-cmake.h.in
                    876: 
                    877: (E) Auxiliary files for VPASCAL
                    878: 
                    879:   makevp.bat
                    880:   makevp_c.txt
                    881:   makevp_l.txt
                    882:   pcregexp.pas
                    883: 
                    884: (F) Auxiliary files for building PCRE "by hand"
                    885: 
                    886:   pcre.h.generic          ) a version of the public PCRE header file
                    887:                           )   for use in non-"configure" environments
                    888:   config.h.generic        ) a version of config.h for use in non-"configure"
                    889:                           )   environments
                    890: 
                    891: (F) Miscellaneous
                    892: 
                    893:   RunTest.bat            a script for running tests under Windows
                    894: 
                    895: Philip Hazel
                    896: Email local part: ph10
                    897: Email domain: cam.ac.uk
1.1.1.3 ! misho     898: Last updated: 18 June 2012

FreeBSD-CVSweb <freebsd-cvsweb@FreeBSD.org>