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+<html>
+<head>
+<title>pcrecompat specification</title>
+</head>
+<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#00005A" link="#0066FF" alink="#3399FF" vlink="#2222BB">
+This HTML document has been generated automatically from the original man page.
+If there is any nonsense in it, please consult the man page, in case the
+conversion went wrong.<br>
+<ul>
+<li><a name="TOC1" href="#SEC1">DIFFERENCES FROM PERL</a>
+</ul>
+<br><a name="SEC1" href="#TOC1">DIFFERENCES FROM PERL</a><br>
+<P>
+This document describes the differences in the ways that PCRE and Perl handle
+regular expressions. The differences described here are with respect to Perl
+5.8.
+</P>
+<P>
+1. PCRE does not have full UTF-8 support. Details of what it does have are
+given in the
+<a href="pcre.html#utf8support">section on UTF-8 support</a>
+in the main
+<a href="pcre.html"><b>pcre</b></a>
+page.
+</P>
+<P>
+2. PCRE does not allow repeat quantifiers on lookahead assertions. Perl permits
+them, but they do not mean what you might think. For example, (?!a){3} does
+not assert that the next three characters are not "a". It just asserts that the
+next character is not "a" three times.
+</P>
+<P>
+3. Capturing subpatterns that occur inside negative lookahead assertions are
+counted, but their entries in the offsets vector are never set. Perl sets its
+numerical variables from any such patterns that are matched before the
+assertion fails to match something (thereby succeeding), but only if the
+negative lookahead assertion contains just one branch.
+</P>
+<P>
+4. Though binary zero characters are supported in the subject string, they are
+not allowed in a pattern string because it is passed as a normal C string,
+terminated by zero. The escape sequence "\0" can be used in the pattern to
+represent a binary zero.
+</P>
+<P>
+5. The following Perl escape sequences are not supported: \l, \u, \L,
+\U, \P, \p, \N, and \X. In fact these are implemented by Perl's general
+string-handling and are not part of its pattern matching engine. If any of
+these are encountered by PCRE, an error is generated.
+</P>
+<P>
+6. PCRE does support the \Q...\E escape for quoting substrings. Characters in
+between are treated as literals. This is slightly different from Perl in that $
+and @ are also handled as literals inside the quotes. In Perl, they cause
+variable interpolation (but of course PCRE does not have variables). Note the
+following examples:
+</P>
+<P>
+<pre>
+ Pattern PCRE matches Perl matches
+</PRE>
+</P>
+<P>
+<pre>
+ \Qabc$xyz\E abc$xyz abc followed by the
+ contents of $xyz
+ \Qabc\$xyz\E abc\$xyz abc\$xyz
+ \Qabc\E\$\Qxyz\E abc$xyz abc$xyz
+</PRE>
+</P>
+<P>
+The \Q...\E sequence is recognized both inside and outside character classes.
+</P>
+<P>
+7. Fairly obviously, PCRE does not support the (?{code}) and (?p{code})
+constructions. However, there is some experimental support for recursive
+patterns using the non-Perl items (?R), (?number) and (?P&#62;name). Also, the PCRE
+"callout" feature allows an external function to be called during pattern
+matching.
+</P>
+<P>
+8. There are some differences that are concerned with the settings of captured
+strings when part of a pattern is repeated. For example, matching "aba" against
+the pattern /^(a(b)?)+$/ in Perl leaves $2 unset, but in PCRE it is set to "b".
+</P>
+<P>
+9. PCRE provides some extensions to the Perl regular expression facilities:
+</P>
+<P>
+(a) Although lookbehind assertions must match fixed length strings, each
+alternative branch of a lookbehind assertion can match a different length of
+string. Perl requires them all to have the same length.
+</P>
+<P>
+(b) If PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY is set and PCRE_MULTILINE is not set, the $
+meta-character matches only at the very end of the string.
+</P>
+<P>
+&copy; If PCRE_EXTRA is set, a backslash followed by a letter with no special
+meaning is faulted.
+</P>
+<P>
+(d) If PCRE_UNGREEDY is set, the greediness of the repetition quantifiers is
+inverted, that is, by default they are not greedy, but if followed by a
+question mark they are.
+</P>
+<P>
+(e) PCRE_ANCHORED can be used to force a pattern to be tried only at the first
+matching position in the subject string.
+</P>
+<P>
+(f) The PCRE_NOTBOL, PCRE_NOTEOL, PCRE_NOTEMPTY, and PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE
+options for <b>pcre_exec()</b> have no Perl equivalents.
+</P>
+<P>
+(g) The (?R), (?number), and (?P&#62;name) constructs allows for recursive pattern
+matching (Perl can do this using the (?p{code}) construct, which PCRE cannot
+support.)
+</P>
+<P>
+(h) PCRE supports named capturing substrings, using the Python syntax.
+</P>
+<P>
+(i) PCRE supports the possessive quantifier "++" syntax, taken from Sun's Java
+package.
+</P>
+<P>
+(j) The (R) condition, for testing recursion, is a PCRE extension.
+</P>
+<P>
+(k) The callout facility is PCRE-specific.
+</P>
+<P>
+Last updated: 09 December 2003
+<br>
+Copyright &copy; 1997-2003 University of Cambridge.