NAME

       PCRE2 - Perl-compatible regular expressions (revised API)

SYNOPSIS

       #include <pcre2.h>

       int32_t pcre2_serialize_encode(const pcre2_code **codes,
         int32_t number_of_codes, uint8_t **serialized_bytes,
         PCRE2_SIZE *serialized_size, pcre2_general_context *gcontext);

DESCRIPTION

       This  function  encodes  a  list  of  compiled  patterns  into a byte stream that can be saved on disc or
       elsewhere. Note that this is not an abstract format like Java or .NET. Conversion of the byte stream back
       into usable compiled patterns can only happen on a host that is running the same version of  PCRE2,  with
       the  same  code unit width, and the host must also have the same endianness, pointer width and PCRE2_SIZE
       type. The arguments for pcre2_serialize_encode() are:

         codes             pointer to a vector containing the list
         number_of_codes   number of slots in the vector
         serialized_bytes  set to point to the serialized byte stream
         serialized_size   set to the number of bytes in the byte stream
         gcontext          pointer to a general context or NULL

       The context argument is used to obtain memory for the byte stream. When the serialized data is no  longer
       needed,  it  must  be freed by calling pcre2_serialize_free(). The yield of the function is the number of
       serialized patterns, or one of the following negative error codes:

         PCRE2_ERROR_BADDATA      number_of_codes is zero or less
         PCRE2_ERROR_BADMAGIC     mismatch of id bytes in one of the patterns
         PCRE2_ERROR_MEMORY       memory allocation failed
         PCRE2_ERROR_MIXEDTABLES  the patterns do not all use the same tables
         PCRE2_ERROR_NULL         an argument other than gcontext is NULL

       PCRE2_ERROR_BADMAGIC means either that a pattern's code has been corrupted, or that a slot in the  vector
       does not point to a compiled pattern.

       There  is  a  complete  description of the PCRE2 native API in the pcre2api page and a description of the
       serialization functions in the pcre2serialize page.

PCRE2 10.32                                       27 June 2018                         PCRE2_SERIALIZE_ENCODE(3)