PCRETEST(1)                                                        PCRETEST(1)



NAME
       pcretest - a program for testing Perl-compatible regular expressions.

SYNOPSIS

       pcretest [options] [source] [destination]

       pcretest was written as a test program for the PCRE regular expression
       library itself, but it can also be used for experimenting with regular
       expressions. This document describes the features of the test program;
       for details of the regular expressions themselves, see the pcrepattern
       documentation. For details of the PCRE library function calls and their
       options, see the pcreapi documentation.

OPTIONS

       -b        Behave as if each regex has the /B (show bytecode) modifier;
                 the internal form is output after compilation.

       -C        Output the version number of the PCRE library, and all
                 available information about the optional features that are
                 included, and then exit.

       -d        Behave as if each regex has the /D (debug) modifier; the
                 internal form and information about the compiled pattern is
                 output after compilation; -d is equivalent to -b -i.

       -dfa      Behave as if each data line contains the \D escape sequence;
                 this causes the alternative matching function,
                 pcre_dfa_exec(), to be used instead of the standard
                 pcre_exec() function (more detail is given below).

       -help     Output a brief summary these options and then exit.

       -i        Behave as if each regex has the /I modifier; information
                 about the compiled pattern is given after compilation.

       -M        Behave as if each data line contains the \M escape sequence;
                 this causes PCRE to discover the minimum MATCH_LIMIT and
                 MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION settings by calling pcre_exec()
                 repeatedly with different limits.

       -m        Output the size of each compiled pattern after it has been
                 compiled. This is equivalent to adding /M to each regular
                 expression. For compatibility with earlier versions of
                 pcretest, -s is a synonym for -m.

       -o osize  Set the number of elements in the output vector that is used
                 when calling pcre_exec() or pcre_dfa_exec() to be osize. The
                 default value is 45, which is enough for 14 capturing
                 subexpressions for pcre_exec() or 22 different matches for
                 pcre_dfa_exec(). The vector size can be changed for
                 individual matching calls by including \O in the data line
                 (see below).

       -p        Behave as if each regex has the /P modifier; the POSIX
                 wrapper API is used to call PCRE. None of the other options
                 has any effect when -p is set.

       -q        Do not output the version number of pcretest at the start of
                 execution.

       -S size   On Unix-like systems, set the size of the runtime stack to
                 size megabytes.

       -t        Run each compile, study, and match many times with a timer,
                 and output resulting time per compile or match (in
                 milliseconds). Do not set -m with -t, because you will then
                 get the size output a zillion times, and the timing will be
                 distorted. You can control the number of iterations that are
                 used for timing by following -t with a number (as a separate
                 item on the command line). For example, "-t 1000" would
                 iterate 1000 times. The default is to iterate 500000 times.

       -tm       This is like -t except that it times only the matching phase,
                 not the compile or study phases.

DESCRIPTION

       If pcretest is given two filename arguments, it reads from the first
       and writes to the second. If it is given only one filename argument, it
       reads from that file and writes to stdout. Otherwise, it reads from
       stdin and writes to stdout, and prompts for each line of input, using
       "re>" to prompt for regular expressions, and "data>" to prompt for data
       lines.

       When pcretest is built, a configuration option can specify that it
       should be linked with the libreadline library. When this is done, if
       the input is from a terminal, it is read using the readline() function.
       This provides line-editing and history facilities. The output from the
       -help option states whether or not readline() will be used.

       The program handles any number of sets of input on a single input file.
       Each set starts with a regular expression, and continues with any
       number of data lines to be matched against the pattern.

       Each data line is matched separately and independently. If you want to
       do multi-line matches, you have to use the \n escape sequence (or \r or
       \r\n, etc., depending on the newline setting) in a single line of input
       to encode the newline sequences. There is no limit on the length of
       data lines; the input buffer is automatically extended if it is too
       small.

       An empty line signals the end of the data lines, at which point a new
       regular expression is read. The regular expressions are given enclosed
       in any non-alphanumeric delimiters other than backslash, for example:

         /(a|bc)x+yz/

       White space before the initial delimiter is ignored. A regular
       expression may be continued over several input lines, in which case the
       newline characters are included within it. It is possible to include
       the delimiter within the pattern by escaping it, for example

         /abc\/def/

       If you do so, the escape and the delimiter form part of the pattern,
       but since delimiters are always non-alphanumeric, this does not affect
       its interpretation.  If the terminating delimiter is immediately
       followed by a backslash, for example,

         /abc/\

       then a backslash is added to the end of the pattern. This is done to
       provide a way of testing the error condition that arises if a pattern
       finishes with a backslash, because

         /abc\/

       is interpreted as the first line of a pattern that starts with "abc/",
       causing pcretest to read the next line as a continuation of the regular
       expression.

PATTERN MODIFIERS

       A pattern may be followed by any number of modifiers, which are mostly
       single characters. Following Perl usage, these are referred to below
       as, for example, "the /i modifier", even though the delimiter of the
       pattern need not always be a slash, and no slash is used when writing
       modifiers. Whitespace may appear between the final pattern delimiter
       and the first modifier, and between the modifiers themselves.

       The /i, /m, /s, and /x modifiers set the PCRE_CASELESS, PCRE_MULTILINE,
       PCRE_DOTALL, or PCRE_EXTENDED options, respectively, when
       pcre_compile() is called. These four modifier letters have the same
       effect as they do in Perl. For example:

         /caseless/i

       The following table shows additional modifiers for setting PCRE
       compile-time options that do not correspond to anything in Perl:

         /8              PCRE_UTF8
         /?              PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK
         /A              PCRE_ANCHORED
         /C              PCRE_AUTO_CALLOUT
         /E              PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY
         /f              PCRE_FIRSTLINE
         /J              PCRE_DUPNAMES
         /N              PCRE_NO_AUTO_CAPTURE
         /U              PCRE_UNGREEDY
         /W              PCRE_UCP
         /X              PCRE_EXTRA
         /Y              PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE
         /<JS>           PCRE_JAVASCRIPT_COMPAT
         /<cr>           PCRE_NEWLINE_CR
         /<lf>           PCRE_NEWLINE_LF
         /<crlf>         PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF
         /<anycrlf>      PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF
         /<any>          PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY
         /<bsr_anycrlf>  PCRE_BSR_ANYCRLF
         /<bsr_unicode>  PCRE_BSR_UNICODE

       The modifiers that are enclosed in angle brackets are literal strings
       as shown, including the angle brackets, but the letters can be in
       either case. This example sets multiline matching with CRLF as the line
       ending sequence:

         /^abc/m<crlf>

       As well as turning on the PCRE_UTF8 option, the /8 modifier also causes
       any non-printing characters in output strings to be printed using the
       \x{hh...} notation if they are valid UTF-8 sequences. Full details of
       the PCRE options are given in the pcreapi documentation.

   Finding all matches in a string

       Searching for all possible matches within each subject string can be
       requested by the /g or /G modifier. After finding a match, PCRE is
       called again to search the remainder of the subject string. The
       difference between /g and /G is that the former uses the startoffset
       argument to pcre_exec() to start searching at a new point within the
       entire string (which is in effect what Perl does), whereas the latter
       passes over a shortened substring. This makes a difference to the
       matching process if the pattern begins with a lookbehind assertion
       (including \b or \B).

       If any call to pcre_exec() in a /g or /G sequence matches an empty
       string, the next call is done with the PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART and
       PCRE_ANCHORED flags set in order to search for another, non-empty,
       match at the same point. If this second match fails, the start offset
       is advanced, and the normal match is retried. This imitates the way
       Perl handles such cases when using the /g modifier or the split()
       function. Normally, the start offset is advanced by one character, but
       if the newline convention recognizes CRLF as a newline, and the current
       character is CR followed by LF, an advance of two is used.

   Other modifiers

       There are yet more modifiers for controlling the way pcretest operates.

       The /+ modifier requests that as well as outputting the substring that
       matched the entire pattern, pcretest should in addition output the
       remainder of the subject string. This is useful for tests where the
       subject contains multiple copies of the same substring.

       The /B modifier is a debugging feature. It requests that pcretest
       output a representation of the compiled byte code after compilation.
       Normally this information contains length and offset values; however,
       if /Z is also present, this data is replaced by spaces. This is a
       special feature for use in the automatic test scripts; it ensures that
       the same output is generated for different internal link sizes.

       The /D modifier is a PCRE debugging feature, and is equivalent to /BI,
       that is, both the /B and the /I modifiers.

       The /F modifier causes pcretest to flip the byte order of the fields in
       the compiled pattern that contain 2-byte and 4-byte numbers. This
       facility is for testing the feature in PCRE that allows it to execute
       patterns that were compiled on a host with a different endianness. This
       feature is not available when the POSIX interface to PCRE is being
       used, that is, when the /P pattern modifier is specified. See also the
       section about saving and reloading compiled patterns below.

       The /I modifier requests that pcretest output information about the
       compiled pattern (whether it is anchored, has a fixed first character,
       and so on). It does this by calling pcre_fullinfo() after compiling a
       pattern. If the pattern is studied, the results of that are also
       output.

       The /K modifier requests pcretest to show names from backtracking
       control verbs that are returned from calls to pcre_exec(). It causes
       pcretest to create a pcre_extra block if one has not already been
       created by a call to pcre_study(), and to set the PCRE_EXTRA_MARK flag
       and the mark field within it, every time that pcre_exec() is called. If
       the variable that the mark field points to is non-NULL for a match,
       non-match, or partial match, pcretest prints the string to which it
       points. For a match, this is shown on a line by itself, tagged with
       "MK:".  For a non-match it is added to the message.

       The /L modifier must be followed directly by the name of a locale, for
       example,

         /pattern/Lfr_FR

       For this reason, it must be the last modifier. The given locale is set,
       pcre_maketables() is called to build a set of character tables for the
       locale, and this is then passed to pcre_compile() when compiling the
       regular expression. Without an /L (or /T) modifier, NULL is passed as
       the tables pointer; that is, /L applies only to the expression on which
       it appears.

       The /M modifier causes the size of memory block used to hold the
       compiled pattern to be output.

       The /S modifier causes pcre_study() to be called after the expression
       has been compiled, and the results used when the expression is matched.

       The /T modifier must be followed by a single digit. It causes a
       specific set of built-in character tables to be passed to
       pcre_compile(). It is used in the standard PCRE tests to check
       behaviour with different character tables. The digit specifies the
       tables as follows:

         0   the default ASCII tables, as distributed in
               pcre_chartables.c.dist
         1   a set of tables defining ISO 8859 characters

       In table 1, some characters whose codes are greater than 128 are
       identified as letters, digits, spaces, etc.

   Using the POSIX wrapper API

       The /P modifier causes pcretest to call PCRE via the POSIX wrapper API
       rather than its native API. When /P is set, the following modifiers set
       options for the regcomp() function:

         /i    REG_ICASE
         /m    REG_NEWLINE
         /N    REG_NOSUB
         /s    REG_DOTALL     )
         /U    REG_UNGREEDY   ) These options are not part of
         /W    REG_UCP        )   the POSIX standard
         /8    REG_UTF8       )

       The /+ modifier works as described above. All other modifiers are
       ignored.

DATA LINES

       Before each data line is passed to pcre_exec(), leading and trailing
       whitespace is removed, and it is then scanned for \ escapes. Some of
       these are pretty esoteric features, intended for checking out some of
       the more complicated features of PCRE. If you are just testing
       "ordinary" regular expressions, you probably don't need any of these.
       The following escapes are recognized:

         \a         alarm (BEL, \x07)
         \b         backspace (\x08)
         \e         escape (\x27)
         \f         formfeed (\x0c)
         \n         newline (\x0a)
         \qdd       set the PCRE_MATCH_LIMIT limit to dd
                      (any number of digits)
         \r         carriage return (\x0d)
         \t         tab (\x09)
         \v         vertical tab (\x0b)
         \nnn       octal character (up to 3 octal digits)
                      always a byte unless > 255 in UTF-8 mode
         \xhh       hexadecimal byte (up to 2 hex digits)
         \x{hh...}  hexadecimal character, any number of digits
                      in UTF-8 mode
         \A         pass the PCRE_ANCHORED option to pcre_exec()
                      or pcre_dfa_exec()
         \B         pass the PCRE_NOTBOL option to pcre_exec()
                      or pcre_dfa_exec()
         \Cdd       call pcre_copy_substring() for substring dd
                      after a successful match (number less than 32)
         \Cname     call pcre_copy_named_substring() for substring
                      "name" after a successful match (name termin-
                      ated by next non alphanumeric character)
         \C+        show the current captured substrings at callout
                      time
         \C-        do not supply a callout function
         \C!n       return 1 instead of 0 when callout number n is
                      reached
         \C!n!m     return 1 instead of 0 when callout number n is
                      reached for the nth time
         \C*n       pass the number n (may be negative) as callout
                      data; this is used as the callout return value
         \D         use the pcre_dfa_exec() match function
         \F         only shortest match for pcre_dfa_exec()
         \Gdd       call pcre_get_substring() for substring dd
                      after a successful match (number less than 32)
         \Gname     call pcre_get_named_substring() for substring
                      "name" after a successful match (name termin-
                      ated by next non-alphanumeric character)
         \L         call pcre_get_substringlist() after a
                      successful match
         \M         discover the minimum MATCH_LIMIT and
                      MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION settings
         \N         pass the PCRE_NOTEMPTY option to pcre_exec()
                      or pcre_dfa_exec(); if used twice, pass the
                      PCRE_NOTEMPTY_ATSTART option
         \Odd       set the size of the output vector passed to
                      pcre_exec() to dd (any number of digits)
         \P         pass the PCRE_PARTIAL_SOFT option to pcre_exec()
                      or pcre_dfa_exec(); if used twice, pass the
                      PCRE_PARTIAL_HARD option
         \Qdd       set the PCRE_MATCH_LIMIT_RECURSION limit to dd
                      (any number of digits)
         \R         pass the PCRE_DFA_RESTART option to pcre_dfa_exec()
         \S         output details of memory get/free calls during matching
         \Y         pass the PCRE_NO_START_OPTIMIZE option to pcre_exec()
                      or pcre_dfa_exec()
         \Z         pass the PCRE_NOTEOL option to pcre_exec()
                      or pcre_dfa_exec()
         \?         pass the PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK option to
                      pcre_exec() or pcre_dfa_exec()
         \>dd       start the match at offset dd (optional "-"; then
                      any number of digits); this sets the startoffset
                      argument for pcre_exec() or pcre_dfa_exec()
         \<cr>      pass the PCRE_NEWLINE_CR option to pcre_exec()
                      or pcre_dfa_exec()
         \<lf>      pass the PCRE_NEWLINE_LF option to pcre_exec()
                      or pcre_dfa_exec()
         \<crlf>    pass the PCRE_NEWLINE_CRLF option to pcre_exec()
                      or pcre_dfa_exec()
         \<anycrlf> pass the PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF option to pcre_exec()
                      or pcre_dfa_exec()
         \<any>     pass the PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY option to pcre_exec()
                      or pcre_dfa_exec()

       Note that \xhh always specifies one byte, even in UTF-8 mode; this
       makes it possible to construct invalid UTF-8 sequences for testing
       purposes. On the other hand, \x{hh} is interpreted as a UTF-8 character
       in UTF-8 mode, generating more than one byte if the value is greater
       than 127. When not in UTF-8 mode, it generates one byte for values less
       than 256, and causes an error for greater values.

       The escapes that specify line ending sequences are literal strings,
       exactly as shown. No more than one newline setting should be present in
       any data line.

       A backslash followed by anything else just escapes the anything else.
       If the very last character is a backslash, it is ignored. This gives a
       way of passing an empty line as data, since a real empty line
       terminates the data input.

       If \M is present, pcretest calls pcre_exec() several times, with
       different values in the match_limit and match_limit_recursion fields of
       the pcre_extra data structure, until it finds the minimum numbers for
       each parameter that allow pcre_exec() to complete. The match_limit
       number is a measure of the amount of backtracking that takes place, and
       checking it out can be instructive. For most simple matches, the number
       is quite small, but for patterns with very large numbers of matching
       possibilities, it can become large very quickly with increasing length
       of subject string. The match_limit_recursion number is a measure of how
       much stack (or, if PCRE is compiled with NO_RECURSE, how much heap)
       memory is needed to complete the match attempt.

       When \O is used, the value specified may be higher or lower than the
       size set by the -O command line option (or defaulted to 45); \O applies
       only to the call of pcre_exec() for the line in which it appears.

       If the /P modifier was present on the pattern, causing the POSIX
       wrapper API to be used, the only option-setting sequences that have any
       effect are \B, \N, and \Z, causing REG_NOTBOL, REG_NOTEMPTY, and
       REG_NOTEOL, respectively, to be passed to regexec().

       The use of \x{hh...} to represent UTF-8 characters is not dependent on
       the use of the /8 modifier on the pattern. It is recognized always.
       There may be any number of hexadecimal digits inside the braces. The
       result is from one to six bytes, encoded according to the original
       UTF-8 rules of RFC 2279. This allows for values in the range 0 to
       0x7FFFFFFF. Note that not all of those are valid Unicode code points,
       or indeed valid UTF-8 characters according to the later rules in RFC
       3629.

THE ALTERNATIVE MATCHING FUNCTION

       By default, pcretest uses the standard PCRE matching function,
       pcre_exec() to match each data line. From release 6.0, PCRE supports an
       alternative matching function, pcre_dfa_test(), which operates in a
       different way, and has some restrictions. The differences between the
       two functions are described in the pcrematching documentation.

       If a data line contains the \D escape sequence, or if the command line
       contains the -dfa option, the alternative matching function is called.
       This function finds all possible matches at a given point. If, however,
       the \F escape sequence is present in the data line, it stops after the
       first match is found. This is always the shortest possible match.

DEFAULT OUTPUT FROM PCRETEST

       This section describes the output when the normal matching function,
       pcre_exec(), is being used.

       When a match succeeds, pcretest outputs the list of captured substrings
       that pcre_exec() returns, starting with number 0 for the string that
       matched the whole pattern. Otherwise, it outputs "No match" when the
       return is PCRE_ERROR_NOMATCH, and "Partial match:" followed by the
       partially matching substring when pcre_exec() returns
       PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL. (Note that this is the entire substring that was
       inspected during the partial match; it may include characters before
       the actual match start if a lookbehind assertion, \K, \b, or \B was
       involved.) For any other returns, it outputs the PCRE negative error
       number. Here is an example of an interactive pcretest run.

         $ pcretest
         PCRE version 7.0 30-Nov-2006

           re> /^abc(\d+)/
         data> abc123
          0: abc123
          1: 123
         data> xyz
         No match

       Note that unset capturing substrings that are not followed by one that
       is set are not returned by pcre_exec(), and are not shown by pcretest.
       In the following example, there are two capturing substrings, but when
       the first data line is matched, the second, unset substring is not
       shown. An "internal" unset substring is shown as "<unset>", as for the
       second data line.

           re> /(a)|(b)/
         data> a
          0: a
          1: a
         data> b
          0: b
          1: <unset>
          2: b

       If the strings contain any non-printing characters, they are output as
       \0x escapes, or as \x{...} escapes if the /8 modifier was present on
       the pattern. See below for the definition of non-printing characters.
       If the pattern has the /+ modifier, the output for substring 0 is
       followed by the the rest of the subject string, identified by "0+" like
       this:

           re> /cat/+
         data> cataract
          0: cat
          0+ aract

       If the pattern has the /g or /G modifier, the results of successive
       matching attempts are output in sequence, like this:

           re> /\Bi(\w\w)/g
         data> Mississippi
          0: iss
          1: ss
          0: iss
          1: ss
          0: ipp
          1: pp

       "No match" is output only if the first match attempt fails.

       If any of the sequences \C, \G, or \L are present in a data line that
       is successfully matched, the substrings extracted by the convenience
       functions are output with C, G, or L after the string number instead of
       a colon. This is in addition to the normal full list. The string length
       (that is, the return from the extraction function) is given in
       parentheses after each string for \C and \G.

       Note that whereas patterns can be continued over several lines (a plain
       ">" prompt is used for continuations), data lines may not. However
       newlines can be included in data by means of the \n escape (or \r,
       \r\n, etc., depending on the newline sequence setting).

OUTPUT FROM THE ALTERNATIVE MATCHING FUNCTION

       When the alternative matching function, pcre_dfa_exec(), is used (by
       means of the \D escape sequence or the -dfa command line option), the
       output consists of a list of all the matches that start at the first
       point in the subject where there is at least one match. For example:

           re> /(tang|tangerine|tan)/
         data> yellow tangerine\D
          0: tangerine
          1: tang
          2: tan

       (Using the normal matching function on this data finds only "tang".)
       The longest matching string is always given first (and numbered zero).
       After a PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL return, the output is "Partial match:",
       followed by the partially matching substring. (Note that this is the
       entire substring that was inspected during the partial match; it may
       include characters before the actual match start if a lookbehind
       assertion, \K, \b, or \B was involved.)

       If /g is present on the pattern, the search for further matches resumes
       at the end of the longest match. For example:

           re> /(tang|tangerine|tan)/g
         data> yellow tangerine and tangy sultana\D
          0: tangerine
          1: tang
          2: tan
          0: tang
          1: tan
          0: tan

       Since the matching function does not support substring capture, the
       escape sequences that are concerned with captured substrings are not
       relevant.

RESTARTING AFTER A PARTIAL MATCH

       When the alternative matching function has given the PCRE_ERROR_PARTIAL
       return, indicating that the subject partially matched the pattern, you
       can restart the match with additional subject data by means of the \R
       escape sequence. For example:

           re> /^\d?\d(jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|jul|aug|sep|oct|nov|dec)\d\d$/
         data> 23ja\P\D
         Partial match: 23ja
         data> n05\R\D
          0: n05

       For further information about partial matching, see the pcrepartial
       documentation.

CALLOUTS

       If the pattern contains any callout requests, pcretest's callout
       function is called during matching. This works with both matching
       functions. By default, the called function displays the callout number,
       the start and current positions in the text at the callout time, and
       the next pattern item to be tested. For example, the output

         --->pqrabcdef
           0    ^  ^     \d

       indicates that callout number 0 occurred for a match attempt starting
       at the fourth character of the subject string, when the pointer was at
       the seventh character of the data, and when the next pattern item was
       \d. Just one circumflex is output if the start and current positions
       are the same.

       Callouts numbered 255 are assumed to be automatic callouts, inserted as
       a result of the /C pattern modifier. In this case, instead of showing
       the callout number, the offset in the pattern, preceded by a plus, is
       output. For example:

           re> /\d?[A-E]\*/C
         data> E*
         --->E*
          +0 ^      \d?
          +3 ^      [A-E]
          +8 ^^     \*
         +10 ^ ^
          0: E*

       The callout function in pcretest returns zero (carry on matching) by
       default, but you can use a \C item in a data line (as described above)
       to change this.

       Inserting callouts can be helpful when using pcretest to check
       complicated regular expressions. For further information about
       callouts, see the pcrecallout documentation.

NON-PRINTING CHARACTERS

       When pcretest is outputting text in the compiled version of a pattern,
       bytes other than 32-126 are always treated as non-printing characters
       are are therefore shown as hex escapes.

       When pcretest is outputting text that is a matched part of a subject
       string, it behaves in the same way, unless a different locale has been
       set for the pattern (using the /L modifier). In this case, the
       isprint() function to distinguish printing and non-printing characters.

SAVING AND RELOADING COMPILED PATTERNS

       The facilities described in this section are not available when the
       POSIX inteface to PCRE is being used, that is, when the /P pattern
       modifier is specified.

       When the POSIX interface is not in use, you can cause pcretest to write
       a compiled pattern to a file, by following the modifiers with > and a
       file name.  For example:

         /pattern/im >/some/file

       See the pcreprecompile documentation for a discussion about saving and
       re-using compiled patterns.

       The data that is written is binary. The first eight bytes are the
       length of the compiled pattern data followed by the length of the
       optional study data, each written as four bytes in big-endian order
       (most significant byte first). If there is no study data (either the
       pattern was not studied, or studying did not return any data), the
       second length is zero. The lengths are followed by an exact copy of the
       compiled pattern. If there is additional study data, this follows
       immediately after the compiled pattern. After writing the file,
       pcretest expects to read a new pattern.

       A saved pattern can be reloaded into pcretest by specifing < and a file
       name instead of a pattern. The name of the file must not contain a <
       character, as otherwise pcretest will interpret the line as a pattern
       delimited by < characters.  For example:

          re> </some/file
         Compiled regex loaded from /some/file
         No study data

       When the pattern has been loaded, pcretest proceeds to read data lines
       in the usual way.

       You can copy a file written by pcretest to a different host and reload
       it there, even if the new host has opposite endianness to the one on
       which the pattern was compiled. For example, you can compile on an i86
       machine and run on a SPARC machine.

       File names for saving and reloading can be absolute or relative, but
       note that the shell facility of expanding a file name that starts with
       a tilde (~) is not available.

       The ability to save and reload files in pcretest is intended for
       testing and experimentation. It is not intended for production use
       because only a single pattern can be written to a file. Furthermore,
       there is no facility for supplying custom character tables for use with
       a reloaded pattern. If the original pattern was compiled with custom
       tables, an attempt to match a subject string using a reloaded pattern
       is likely to cause pcretest to crash.  Finally, if you attempt to load
       a file that is not in the correct format, the result is undefined.

SEE ALSO

       pcre(3), pcreapi(3), pcrecallout(3), pcrematching(3), pcrepartial(d),
       pcrepattern(3), pcreprecompile(3).

AUTHOR

       Philip Hazel
       University Computing Service
       Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.

REVISION

       Last updated: 21 November 2010
       Copyright (c) 1997-2010 University of Cambridge.



                                                                   PCRETEST(1)
