pcre_exec specification

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SYNOPSIS

#include <pcre.h>

int pcre_exec(const pcre *code, const pcre_extra *extra, const char *subject, int length, int startoffset, int options, int *ovector, int ovecsize);

DESCRIPTION

This function matches a compiled regular expression against a given subject string, and returns offsets to capturing subexpressions. Its arguments are:

      code         Points to the compiled pattern
      extra        Points to an associated pcre_extra structure,
                     or is NULL
      subject      Points to the subject string
      length       Length of the subject string, in bytes
      startoffset  Offset in bytes in the subject at which to
                     start matching
      options      Option bits
      ovector      Points to a vector of ints for result offsets
      ovecsize     Size of the vector (a multiple of 3)

The options are:

      PCRE_ANCHORED      Match only at the first position
      PCRE_NOTBOL        Subject is not the beginning of a line
      PCRE_NOTEOL        Subject is not the end of a line
      PCRE_NOTEMPTY      An empty string is not a valid match
      PCRE_NO_UTF8_CHECK Do not check the subject for UTF-8
                           validity (only relevant if PCRE_UTF8
                           was set at compile time)

There is a complete description of the PCRE API in the pcreapi page.