-The maximum length of a compiled pattern is 65539 (sic) bytes if PCRE is -compiled with the default internal linkage size of 2. If you want to process +The maximum length of a compiled pattern is approximately 64K data units (bytes +for the 8-bit library, 16-bit units for the 16-bit library) if PCRE is compiled +with the default internal linkage size of 2 bytes. If you want to process regular expressions that are truly enormous, you can compile PCRE with an -internal linkage size of 3 or 4 (see the README file in the source -distribution and the +internal linkage size of 3 or 4 (when building the 16-bit library, 3 is rounded +up to 4). See the README file in the source distribution and the pcrebuild -documentation for details). In these cases the limit is substantially larger. +documentation for details. In these cases the limit is substantially larger. However, the speed of execution is slower.
@@ -47,6 +48,10 @@ The maximum length of name for a named subpattern is 3 maximum number of named subpatterns is 10000.
+The maximum length of a name in a (*MARK), (*PRUNE), (*SKIP), or (*THEN) verb +is 255 for the 8-bit library and 65535 for the 16-bit library. +
+
The maximum length of a subject string is the largest positive number that an
integer variable can hold. However, when using the traditional matching
function, PCRE uses recursion to handle subpatterns and indefinite repetition.
@@ -71,9 +76,9 @@ Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
REVISION
-Last updated: 30 November 2011
+Last updated: 04 May 2012
-Copyright © 1997-2011 University of Cambridge.
+Copyright © 1997-2012 University of Cambridge.
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