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1.1 ! misho 1: <html> ! 2: <head> ! 3: <title>pcrelimits specification</title> ! 4: </head> ! 5: <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#00005A" link="#0066FF" alink="#3399FF" vlink="#2222BB"> ! 6: <h1>pcrelimits man page</h1> ! 7: <p> ! 8: Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>. ! 9: </p> ! 10: <p> ! 11: This page is part of the PCRE HTML documentation. It was generated automatically ! 12: from the original man page. If there is any nonsense in it, please consult the ! 13: man page, in case the conversion went wrong. ! 14: <br> ! 15: <br><b> ! 16: SIZE AND OTHER LIMITATIONS ! 17: </b><br> ! 18: <P> ! 19: There are some size limitations in PCRE but it is hoped that they will never in ! 20: practice be relevant. ! 21: </P> ! 22: <P> ! 23: The maximum length of a compiled pattern is 65539 (sic) bytes if PCRE is ! 24: compiled with the default internal linkage size of 2. If you want to process ! 25: regular expressions that are truly enormous, you can compile PCRE with an ! 26: internal linkage size of 3 or 4 (see the <b>README</b> file in the source ! 27: distribution and the ! 28: <a href="pcrebuild.html"><b>pcrebuild</b></a> ! 29: documentation for details). In these cases the limit is substantially larger. ! 30: However, the speed of execution is slower. ! 31: </P> ! 32: <P> ! 33: All values in repeating quantifiers must be less than 65536. ! 34: </P> ! 35: <P> ! 36: There is no limit to the number of parenthesized subpatterns, but there can be ! 37: no more than 65535 capturing subpatterns. ! 38: </P> ! 39: <P> ! 40: There is a limit to the number of forward references to subsequent subpatterns ! 41: of around 200,000. Repeated forward references with fixed upper limits, for ! 42: example, (?2){0,100} when subpattern number 2 is to the right, are included in ! 43: the count. There is no limit to the number of backward references. ! 44: </P> ! 45: <P> ! 46: The maximum length of name for a named subpattern is 32 characters, and the ! 47: maximum number of named subpatterns is 10000. ! 48: </P> ! 49: <P> ! 50: The maximum length of a subject string is the largest positive number that an ! 51: integer variable can hold. However, when using the traditional matching ! 52: function, PCRE uses recursion to handle subpatterns and indefinite repetition. ! 53: This means that the available stack space may limit the size of a subject ! 54: string that can be processed by certain patterns. For a discussion of stack ! 55: issues, see the ! 56: <a href="pcrestack.html"><b>pcrestack</b></a> ! 57: documentation. ! 58: </P> ! 59: <br><b> ! 60: AUTHOR ! 61: </b><br> ! 62: <P> ! 63: Philip Hazel ! 64: <br> ! 65: University Computing Service ! 66: <br> ! 67: Cambridge CB2 3QH, England. ! 68: <br> ! 69: </P> ! 70: <br><b> ! 71: REVISION ! 72: </b><br> ! 73: <P> ! 74: Last updated: 30 November 2011 ! 75: <br> ! 76: Copyright © 1997-2011 University of Cambridge. ! 77: <br> ! 78: <p> ! 79: Return to the <a href="index.html">PCRE index page</a>. ! 80: </p>