NAME

       PCRE2 - Perl-compatible regular expressions (revised API)

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PCRE2 AND PERL

       This  document  describes  the  differences in the ways that PCRE2 and Perl handle regular
       expressions. The differences described here are with respect to  Perl  versions  5.10  and
       above.

       1.  PCRE2  has  only  a subset of Perl's Unicode support. Details of what it does have are
       given in the pcre2unicode page.

       2. PCRE2 allows repeat quantifiers only on parenthesized assertions, 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 (in principle:
       PCRE2  optimizes  this  to run the assertion just once). Perl allows repeat quantifiers on
       other assertions such as \b, but these do not seem to have any use.

       3. Capturing subpatterns that occur inside negative lookahead assertions are counted,  but
       their  entries  in  the offsets vector are never set. Perl sometimes (but not always) sets
       its numerical variables from inside negative assertions.

       4. The following Perl escape sequences are not supported: \l, \u,  \L,  \U,  and  \N  when
       followed  by  a  character  name  or Unicode value. (\N on its own, matching a non-newline
       character, is supported.) 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 PCRE2,
       an error is generated by default. However, if the PCRE2_ALT_BSUX option is set, \U and  \u
       are interpreted as ECMAScript interprets them.

       5.  The  Perl  escape  sequences  \p, \P, and \X are supported only if PCRE2 is built with
       Unicode support. The properties that can be tested with \p  and  \P  are  limited  to  the
       general  category properties such as Lu and Nd, script names such as Greek or Han, and the
       derived properties Any and L&. PCRE2 does support the Cs (surrogate) property, which  Perl
       does  not;  the  Perl  documentation  says  "Because  Perl  hides the need for the user to
       understand the internal  representation  of  Unicode  characters,  there  is  no  need  to
       implement the somewhat messy concept of surrogates."

       6. PCRE2 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
       PCRE2 does not have variables).  Note the following examples:

           Pattern            PCRE2 matches      Perl matches

           \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

       The \Q...\E sequence is recognized both inside and outside character classes.

       7. Fairly obviously, PCRE2 does not support the (?{code})  and  (??{code})  constructions.
       However,  there  is support for recursive patterns. This is not available in Perl 5.8, but
       it is in Perl 5.10. Also, the PCRE2 "callout" feature allows an external  function  to  be
       called during pattern matching. See the pcre2callout documentation for details.

       8.  Subroutine  calls  (whether  recursive  or  not) are treated as atomic groups.  Atomic
       recursion is like Python, but  unlike  Perl.  Captured  values  that  are  set  outside  a
       subroutine  call  can  be  referenced  from  inside  in PCRE2, but not in Perl. There is a
       discussion that explains these differences in more detail  in  the  section  on  recursion
       differences from Perl in the pcre2pattern page.

       9.  If  any of the backtracking control verbs are used in a subpattern that is called as a
       subroutine (whether or not recursively), their effect is confined to that  subpattern;  it
       does  not  extend  to  the  surrounding  pattern.  This is not always the case in Perl. In
       particular, if (*THEN) is present in a group that is called as a subroutine, its action is
       limited to that group, even if the group does not contain any | characters. Note that such
       subpatterns are processed as anchored at the point where they are tested.

       10. If a pattern contains more than one backtracking control verb, the first one  that  is
       backtracked  onto  acts.  For  example, in the pattern A(*COMMIT)B(*PRUNE)C a failure in B
       triggers (*COMMIT), but a failure  in  C  triggers  (*PRUNE).  Perl's  behaviour  is  more
       complex; in many cases it is the same as PCRE2, but there are examples where it differs.

       11. Most backtracking verbs in assertions have their normal actions. They are not confined
       to the assertion.

       12. 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 PCRE2 it is set to "b".

       13. PCRE2's handling of duplicate subpattern numbers and duplicate subpattern names is not
       as  general  as  Perl's. This is a consequence of the fact the PCRE2 works internally just
       with numbers, using  an  external  table  to  translate  between  numbers  and  names.  In
       particular, a pattern such as (?|(?<a>A)|(?<b)B), where the two capturing parentheses have
       the same number but different names, is not supported, and  causes  an  error  at  compile
       time.  If  it  were  allowed,  it  would  not be possible to distinguish which parentheses
       matched, because both names map to capturing subpattern number 1. To avoid this  confusing
       situation, an error is given at compile time.

       14.  Perl recognizes comments in some places that PCRE2 does not, for example, between the
       ( and ? at the start of a subpattern. If the /x modifier is set, Perl allows  white  space
       between  ( and ? (though current Perls warn that this is deprecated) but PCRE2 never does,
       even if the PCRE2_EXTENDED option is set.

       15. Perl, when in warning mode, gives warnings for character classes  such  as  [A-\d]  or
       [a-[:digit:]].  It  then treats the hyphens as literals. PCRE2 has no warning features, so
       it gives an error in these cases because they are almost certainly user mistakes.

       16. In PCRE2, the upper/lower case character properties Lu and Ll are  not  affected  when
       case-independent  matching  is specified. For example, \p{Lu} always matches an upper case
       letter. I think Perl has changed in this respect; in the release at the  time  of  writing
       (5.16), \p{Lu} and \p{Ll} match all letters, regardless of case, when case independence is
       specified.

       17. PCRE2 provides some extensions to the Perl regular expression facilities.   Perl  5.10
       includes  new  features  that  are not in earlier versions of Perl, some of which (such as
       named parentheses) have been in PCRE2 for some time. This list is  with  respect  to  Perl
       5.10:

       (a)  Although  lookbehind  assertions  in  PCRE2  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.

       (b)  If  PCRE2_DOLLAR_ENDONLY  is set and PCRE2_MULTILINE is not set, the $ meta-character
       matches only at the very end of the string.

       (c) A backslash followed by a letter with no special meaning is faulted. (Perl can be made
       to issue a warning.)

       (d)  If  PCRE2_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.

       (e) PCRE2_ANCHORED can be used at matching time to force a pattern to be tried only at the
       first matching position in the subject string.

       (f)   The   PCRE2_NOTBOL,   PCRE2_NOTEOL,   PCRE2_NOTEMPTY,   PCRE2_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART,  and
       PCRE2_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE options have no Perl equivalents.

       (g) The \R escape sequence can be restricted  to  match  only  CR,  LF,  or  CRLF  by  the
       PCRE2_BSR_ANYCRLF option.

       (h) The callout facility is PCRE2-specific.

       (i) The partial matching facility is PCRE2-specific.

       (j) The alternative matching function (pcre2_dfa_match() matches in a different way and is
       not Perl-compatible.

       (k) PCRE2 recognizes some special sequences such as (*CR) at the start of a  pattern  that
       set overall options that cannot be changed within the pattern.

AUTHOR

       Philip Hazel
       University Computing Service
       Cambridge, England.

REVISION

       Last updated: 15 March 2015
       Copyright (c) 1997-2015 University of Cambridge.