PCRE specification

# Perl-compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE)

The HTML documentation for PCRE comprises the following pages:

pcre | Introductory page
pcreapi | PCRE's native API
pcrebuild | Options for building PCRE
pcrecallout | The callout facility
pcrecompat | Compability with Perl
pcrecpp | The C++ wrapper for the PCRE library
pcregrep | The pcregrep command
pcrematching | Discussion of the two matching algorithms
pcrepartial | Using PCRE for partial matching
pcrepattern | Specification of the regular expressions supported by PCRE
pcreperform | Some comments on performance
pcreposix | The POSIX API to the PCRE library
pcreprecompile | How to save and re-use compiled patterns
pcresample | Description of the sample program
pcretest | The pcretest command for testing PCRE

There are also individual pages that summarize the interface for each function in the library:

pcre_compile | Compile a regular expression
pcre_compile2 | Compile a regular expression (alternate interface)
pcre_config | Show build-time configuration options
pcre_copy_named_substring | Extract named substring into given buffer
pcre_copy_substring | Extract numbered substring into given buffer
pcre_dfa_exec | Match a compiled pattern to a subject string (DFA algorithm; not Perl compatible)
pcre_exec | Match a compiled pattern to a subject string (Perl compatible)
pcre_free_substring | Free extracted substring
pcre_free_substring_list | Free list of extracted substrings
pcre_fullinfo | Extract information about a pattern
pcre_get_named_substring | Extract named substring into new memory
pcre_get_stringnumber | Convert captured string name to number
pcre_get_substring | Extract numbered substring into new memory
pcre_get_substring_list | Extract all substrings into new memory
pcre_info | Obsolete information extraction function
pcre_maketables | Build character tables in current locale
pcre_study | Study a compiled pattern
pcre_version | Return PCRE version and release date