'\" t .\" Copyright (C), 1995, Graeme W. Wilford. (Wilf.) .\" .\" SPDX-License-Identifier: Linux-man-pages-copyleft .\" .\" Wed Jun 14 16:10:28 BST 1995 Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk) .\" Tiny change in formatting - aeb, 950812 .\" Modified 8 May 1998 by Joseph S. Myers (jsm28@cam.ac.uk) .\" .\" show the synopsis section nicely .TH regex 3 2023-03-30 "Linux man-pages 6.04" .SH NAME regcomp, regexec, regerror, regfree \- POSIX regex functions .SH LIBRARY Standard C library .RI ( libc ", " \-lc ) .SH SYNOPSIS .nf .B #include .PP .BI "int regcomp(regex_t *restrict " preg ", const char *restrict " regex , .BI " int " cflags ); .BI "int regexec(const regex_t *restrict " preg \ ", const char *restrict " string , .BI " size_t " nmatch ", regmatch_t " pmatch "[restrict ." nmatch ], .BI " int " eflags ); .PP .BI "size_t regerror(int " errcode ", const regex_t *restrict " preg , .BI " char " errbuf "[restrict ." errbuf_size "], \ size_t " errbuf_size ); .BI "void regfree(regex_t *" preg ); .fi .SH DESCRIPTION .SS POSIX regex compiling .BR regcomp () is used to compile a regular expression into a form that is suitable for subsequent .BR regexec () searches. .PP .BR regcomp () is supplied with .IR preg , a pointer to a pattern buffer storage area; .IR regex , a pointer to the null-terminated string and .IR cflags , flags used to determine the type of compilation. .PP All regular expression searching must be done via a compiled pattern buffer, thus .BR regexec () must always be supplied with the address of a .BR regcomp ()-initialized pattern buffer. .PP .I cflags is the .RB bitwise- or of zero or more of the following: .TP .B REG_EXTENDED Use .B POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax when interpreting .IR regex . If not set, .B POSIX Basic Regular Expression syntax is used. .TP .B REG_ICASE Do not differentiate case. Subsequent .BR regexec () searches using this pattern buffer will be case insensitive. .TP .B REG_NOSUB Do not report position of matches. The .I nmatch and .I pmatch arguments to .BR regexec () are ignored if the pattern buffer supplied was compiled with this flag set. .TP .B REG_NEWLINE Match-any-character operators don't match a newline. .IP A nonmatching list .RB ( [\[ha]...] ) not containing a newline does not match a newline. .IP Match-beginning-of-line operator .RB ( \[ha] ) matches the empty string immediately after a newline, regardless of whether .IR eflags , the execution flags of .BR regexec (), contains .BR REG_NOTBOL . .IP Match-end-of-line operator .RB ( $ ) matches the empty string immediately before a newline, regardless of whether .I eflags contains .BR REG_NOTEOL . .SS POSIX regex matching .BR regexec () is used to match a null-terminated string against the precompiled pattern buffer, .IR preg . .I nmatch and .I pmatch are used to provide information regarding the location of any matches. .I eflags is the .RB bitwise- or of zero or more of the following flags: .TP .B REG_NOTBOL The match-beginning-of-line operator always fails to match (but see the compilation flag .B REG_NEWLINE above). This flag may be used when different portions of a string are passed to .BR regexec () and the beginning of the string should not be interpreted as the beginning of the line. .TP .B REG_NOTEOL The match-end-of-line operator always fails to match (but see the compilation flag .B REG_NEWLINE above). .TP .B REG_STARTEND Use .I pmatch[0] on the input string, starting at byte .I pmatch[0].rm_so and ending before byte .IR pmatch[0].rm_eo . This allows matching embedded NUL bytes and avoids a .BR strlen (3) on large strings. It does not use .I nmatch on input, and does not change .B REG_NOTBOL or .B REG_NEWLINE processing. This flag is a BSD extension, not present in POSIX. .SS Byte offsets Unless .B REG_NOSUB was set for the compilation of the pattern buffer, it is possible to obtain match addressing information. .I pmatch must be dimensioned to have at least .I nmatch elements. These are filled in by .BR regexec () with substring match addresses. The offsets of the subexpression starting at the .IR i th open parenthesis are stored in .IR pmatch[i] . The entire regular expression's match addresses are stored in .IR pmatch[0] . (Note that to return the offsets of .I N subexpression matches, .I nmatch must be at least .IR N+1 .) Any unused structure elements will contain the value \-1. .PP The .I regmatch_t structure which is the type of .I pmatch is defined in .IR . .PP .in +4n .EX typedef struct { regoff_t rm_so; regoff_t rm_eo; } regmatch_t; .EE .in .PP Each .I rm_so element that is not \-1 indicates the start offset of the next largest substring match within the string. The relative .I rm_eo element indicates the end offset of the match, which is the offset of the first character after the matching text. .SS POSIX error reporting .BR regerror () is used to turn the error codes that can be returned by both .BR regcomp () and .BR regexec () into error message strings. .PP .BR regerror () is passed the error code, .IR errcode , the pattern buffer, .IR preg , a pointer to a character string buffer, .IR errbuf , and the size of the string buffer, .IR errbuf_size . It returns the size of the .I errbuf required to contain the null-terminated error message string. If both .I errbuf and .I errbuf_size are nonzero, .I errbuf is filled in with the first .I "errbuf_size \- 1" characters of the error message and a terminating null byte (\[aq]\e0\[aq]). .SS POSIX pattern buffer freeing Supplying .BR regfree () with a precompiled pattern buffer, .IR preg , will free the memory allocated to the pattern buffer by the compiling process, .BR regcomp (). .SH RETURN VALUE .BR regcomp () returns zero for a successful compilation or an error code for failure. .PP .BR regexec () returns zero for a successful match or .B REG_NOMATCH for failure. .SH ERRORS The following errors can be returned by .BR regcomp (): .TP .B REG_BADBR Invalid use of back reference operator. .TP .B REG_BADPAT Invalid use of pattern operators such as group or list. .TP .B REG_BADRPT Invalid use of repetition operators such as using \[aq]*\[aq] as the first character. .TP .B REG_EBRACE Un-matched brace interval operators. .TP .B REG_EBRACK Un-matched bracket list operators. .TP .B REG_ECOLLATE Invalid collating element. .TP .B REG_ECTYPE Unknown character class name. .TP .B REG_EEND Nonspecific error. This is not defined by POSIX.2. .TP .B REG_EESCAPE Trailing backslash. .TP .B REG_EPAREN Un-matched parenthesis group operators. .TP .B REG_ERANGE Invalid use of the range operator; for example, the ending point of the range occurs prior to the starting point. .TP .B REG_ESIZE Compiled regular expression requires a pattern buffer larger than 64\ kB. This is not defined by POSIX.2. .TP .B REG_ESPACE The regex routines ran out of memory. .TP .B REG_ESUBREG Invalid back reference to a subexpression. .SH ATTRIBUTES For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see .BR attributes (7). .ad l .nh .TS allbox; lbx lb lb l l l. Interface Attribute Value T{ .BR regcomp (), .BR regexec () T} Thread safety MT-Safe locale T{ .BR regerror () T} Thread safety MT-Safe env T{ .BR regfree () T} Thread safety MT-Safe .TE .hy .ad .sp 1 .SH STANDARDS POSIX.1-2008. .SH HISTORY POSIX.1-2001. .SH EXAMPLES .EX #include #include #include #include #define ARRAY_SIZE(arr) (sizeof((arr)) / sizeof((arr)[0])) static const char *const str = "1) John Driverhacker;\en2) John Doe;\en3) John Foo;\en"; static const char *const re = "John.*o"; int main(void) { static const char *s = str; regex_t regex; regmatch_t pmatch[1]; regoff_t off, len; if (regcomp(®ex, re, REG_NEWLINE)) exit(EXIT_FAILURE); printf("String = \e"%s\e"\en", str); printf("Matches:\en"); for (unsigned int i = 0; ; i++) { if (regexec(®ex, s, ARRAY_SIZE(pmatch), pmatch, 0)) break; off = pmatch[0].rm_so + (s \- str); len = pmatch[0].rm_eo \- pmatch[0].rm_so; printf("#%zu:\en", i); printf("offset = %jd; length = %jd\en", (intmax_t) off, (intmax_t) len); printf("substring = \e"%.*s\e"\en", len, s + pmatch[0].rm_so); s += pmatch[0].rm_eo; } exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); } .EE .SH SEE ALSO .BR grep (1), .BR regex (7) .PP The glibc manual section, .I "Regular Expressions"