libc/regex/regex.3

.\" $NetBSD: regex.3,v 1.35 2024/09/24 14:10:43 uwe Exp $
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 1992, 1993, 1994 Henry Spencer.
.\" Copyright (c) 1992, 1993, 1994
.\"	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
.\" Henry Spencer.
.\"
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.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
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.\"	@(#)regex.3	8.4 (Berkeley) 3/20/94
.\" $FreeBSD: head/lib/libc/regex/regex.3 363817 2020-08-04 02:06:49Z kevans $
.\"
.Dd September 21, 2024
.Dt REGEX 3
.Os
.
.Sh NAME
.Nm regcomp ,
.Nm regexec ,
.Nm regerror ,
.Nm regfree ,
.Nm regasub ,
.Nm regnsub
.
.Nd regular-expression library
.
.Sh LIBRARY
.Lb libc
.
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.
.In regex.h
.
.Ft int
.Fo regcomp
.Fa "regex_t * restrict preg"
.Fa "const char * restrict pattern"
.Fa "int cflags"
.Fc
.
.Ft int
.Fo regexec
.Fa "const regex_t * restrict preg"
.Fa "const char * restrict string"
.Fa "size_t nmatch"
.Fa "regmatch_t pmatch[restrict]"
.Fa "int eflags"
.Fc
.Ft size_t
.Fo regerror
.Fa "int errcode"
.Fa "const regex_t * restrict preg"
.Fa "char * restrict errbuf"
.Fa "size_t errbuf_size"
.Fc
.
.Ft void
.Fn regfree "regex_t *preg"
.
.Ft ssize_t
.Fo regnsub
.Fa "char *buf"
.Fa "size_t bufsiz"
.Fa "const char *sub"
.Fa "const regmatch_t *rm"
.Fa "const char *str"
.Fc
.
.Ft ssize_t
.Fo regasub
.Fa "char **buf"
.Fa "const char *sub"
.Fa "const regmatch_t *rm"
.Fa "const char *sstr"
.Fc
.
.Sh DESCRIPTION
These routines implement
.St -p1003.2
regular expressions
.Pq Do Tn RE Dc Ns s ;
see
.Xr re_format 7 .
The
.Fn regcomp
function
compiles an RE written as a string into an internal form,
.Fn regexec
matches that internal form against a string and reports results,
.Fn regerror
transforms error codes from either into human-readable messages,
and
.Fn regfree
frees any dynamically-allocated storage used by the internal form
of an RE.
.Pp
The header
.In regex.h
declares two structure types,
.Ft regex_t
and
.Ft regmatch_t ,
the former for compiled internal forms and the latter for match reporting.
It also declares the four functions,
a type
.Ft regoff_t ,
and a number of constants with names starting with
.Ql REG_ .
.Pp
The
.Fn regcomp
function
compiles the regular expression contained in the
.Fa pattern
string,
subject to the flags in
.Fa cflags ,
and places the results in the
.Ft regex_t
structure pointed to by
.Fa preg .
The
.Fa cflags
argument
is the bitwise
.Em or
of zero or more of the following flags:
.Bl -tag -width Dv
.
.It Dv REG_EXTENDED
Compile modern
.Pq Dq extended
REs,
rather than the obsolete
.Pq Dq basic
REs that
are the default.
.
.It Dv REG_BASIC
This is a synonym for 0,
provided as a counterpart to
.Dv REG_EXTENDED
to improve readability.
.
.It Dv REG_NOSPEC
Compile with recognition of all special characters turned off.
All characters are thus considered ordinary,
so the
.Dq RE
is a literal string.
This is an extension,
compatible with but not specified by
.St -p1003.2 ,
and should be used with
caution in software intended to be portable to other systems.
.Dv REG_EXTENDED
and
.Dv REG_NOSPEC
may not be used
in the same call to
.Fn regcomp .
.
.It Dv REG_ICASE
Compile for matching that ignores upper\|/\^lower case distinctions.
See
.Xr re_format 7 .
.
.It Dv REG_NOSUB
Compile for matching that need only report success or failure,
not what was matched.
.
.It Dv REG_NEWLINE
Compile for newline-sensitive matching.
By default, newline is a completely ordinary character with no special
meaning in either REs or strings.
With this flag,
.Ql \&[^
bracket expressions and
.Ql \&.
never match newline,
a
.Ql \&^
anchor matches the null string after any newline in the string
in addition to its normal function,
and the
.Ql \&$
anchor matches the null string before any newline in the
string in addition to its normal function.
.
.It Dv REG_PEND
The regular expression ends,
not at the first
.Tn NUL ,
but just before the character pointed to by the
.Fa re_endp
member of the structure pointed to by
.Fa preg .
The
.Fa re_endp
member is of type
.Ft "const char *" .
This flag permits inclusion of
.Tn NUL Ns s
in the RE;
they are considered ordinary characters.
This is an extension,
compatible with but not specified by
.St -p1003.2 ,
and should be used with
caution in software intended to be portable to other systems.
.It Dv REG_GNU
Include GNU-inspired extensions:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -offset indent -width Ds -compact
.It Ic \e Ns Ar N
Use backreference
.Ar N
where
.Ar N
is a single digit number between 1 and 9.
.It Ic \ea
Visual Bell
.It Ic \eb
Match a position that is a word boundary.
.It Ic \eB
Match a position that is a not word boundary.
.It Ic \ef
Form Feed
.It Ic \en
Line Feed
.It Ic \er
Carriage return
.It Ic \es
Alias for
.Ql [[:space:]]
.It Ic \eS
Alias for
.Ql [^[:space:]]
.It Ic \et
Horizontal Tab
.It Ic \ev
Vertical Tab
.It Ic \ew
Alias for
.Ql [[:alnum:]_]
.It Ic \eW
Alias for
.Ql [^[:alnum:]_]
.It Ic \e'
Matches the end of the subject string (the string to be matched).
.It Ic \e`
Matches the beginning of the subject string.
.El
.Pp
This is an extension,
compatible with but not specified by
.St -p1003.2 ,
and should be used with
caution in software intended to be portable to other systems.
.El
.Pp
When successful,
.Fn regcomp
returns 0 and fills in the structure pointed to by
.Fa preg .
One member of that structure
.Pq other than Fa re_endp
is publicized:
.Fa re_nsub ,
of type
.Ft size_t ,
contains the number of parenthesized subexpressions within the RE
.Po
except that the value of this member is undefined if the
.Dv REG_NOSUB
flag was used
.Pc .
If
.Fn regcomp
fails, it returns a non-zero error code;
see
.Sx RETURN VALUES .
.Pp
The
.Fn regexec
function
matches the compiled RE pointed to by
.Fa preg
against the
.Fa string ,
subject to the flags in
.Fa eflags ,
and reports results using
.Fa nmatch ,
.Fa pmatch ,
and the returned value.
The RE must have been compiled by a previous invocation of
.Fn regcomp .
The compiled form is not altered during execution of
.Fn regexec ,
so a single compiled RE can be used simultaneously by multiple threads.
.Pp
By default,
the NUL-terminated string pointed to by
.Fa string
is considered to be the text of an entire line, minus any terminating
newline.
The
.Fa eflags
argument is the bitwise
.Em or
of zero or more of the following flags:
.Bl -tag -width Dv
.
.It Dv REG_NOTBOL
The first character of the string is treated as the continuation
of a line.
This means that the anchors
.Ql \&^ ,
.Ql [[:<:]] ,
and
.Ql \e<
do not match before it; but see
.Dv REG_STARTEND
below.
This does not affect the behavior of newlines under
.Dv REG_NEWLINE .
.
.It Dv REG_NOTEOL
The NUL terminating
the string
does not end a line, so the
.Ql \&$
anchor does not match before it.
This does not affect the behavior of newlines under
.Dv REG_NEWLINE .
.
.It Dv REG_STARTEND
The string is considered to start at
.Sm off
.Fa string Li " + " Fa pmatch Li [0]. Fa rm_so
.Sm on
and to end before the byte located at
.Sm off
.Fa string Li " + " Fa pmatch Li [0]. Fa rm_eo ,
.Sm on
regardless of the value of
.Fa nmatch .
See below for the definition of
.Fa pmatch
and
.Fa nmatch .
This is an extension,
compatible with but not specified by
.St -p1003.2 ,
and should be used with
caution in software intended to be portable to other systems.
.Pp
Without
.Dv REG_NOTBOL ,
the position
.Fa rm_so
is considered the beginning of a line, such that
.Ql \&^
matches before it, and the beginning of a word if there is a word
character at this position, such that
.Ql [[:<:]]
and
.Ql \e<
match before it.
.Pp
With
.Dv REG_NOTBOL ,
the character at position
.Fa rm_so
is treated as the continuation of a line, and if
.Fa rm_so
is greater than 0, the preceding character is taken into consideration.
If the preceding character is a newline and the regular expression was compiled
with
.Dv REG_NEWLINE ,
.Ql \&^
matches before the string; if the preceding character is not a word character
but the string starts with a word character,
.Ql [[:<:]]
and
.Ql \e<
match before the string.
.El
.Pp
See
.Xr re_format 7
for a discussion of what is matched in situations where an RE or a
portion thereof could match any of several substrings of
.Fa string .
.Pp
Normally,
.Fn regexec
returns 0 for success and the non-zero code
.Dv REG_NOMATCH
for failure.
Other non-zero error codes may be returned in exceptional situations;
see
.Sx RETURN VALUES .
.Pp
If
.Dv REG_NOSUB
was specified in the compilation of the RE,
or if
.Fa nmatch
is 0,
.Fn regexec
ignores the
.Fa pmatch
argument
.Po
but see below for the case where
.Dv REG_STARTEND
is specified
.Pc .
Otherwise,
.Fa pmatch
points to an array of
.Fa nmatch
structures of type
.Ft regmatch_t .
Such a structure has at least the members
.Va rm_so
and
.Va rm_eo ,
both of type
.Ft regoff_t
.Po
a signed arithmetic type at least as large as an
.Ft off_t
and a
.Ft ssize_t
.Pc ,
containing respectively the offset of the first character of a substring
and the offset of the first character after the end of the substring.
Offsets are measured from the beginning of the
.Fa string
argument given to
.Fn regexec .
An empty substring is denoted by equal offsets,
both indicating the character following the empty substring.
.Pp
The
.No 0 Ap th
member of the
.Fa pmatch
array is filled in to indicate what substring of
.Fa string
was matched by the entire RE.
Remaining members report what substring was matched by parenthesized
subexpressions within the RE;
member
.Va i
reports subexpression
.Va i ,
with subexpressions counted
.Pq starting at 1
by the order of their opening parentheses in the RE, left to right.
Unused entries in the array
.Po
corresponding either to subexpressions that
did not participate in the match at all, or to subexpressions that do not
exist in the RE,
that is,
.Va i
>
.Fa preg Ns Li -> Ns Fa re_nsub
.Pc
have both
.Fa rm_so
and
.Fa rm_eo
set to \-1.
If a subexpression participated in the match several times,
the reported substring is the last one it matched.
.Po
Note, as an example in particular, that when the RE
.Ql "(b*)+"
matches
.Ql bbb ,
the parenthesized subexpression matches each of the three
.So Li b Sc Ns s
and then
an infinite number of empty strings following the last
.Ql b ,
so the reported substring is one of the empties.
.Pc
.Pp
If
.Dv REG_STARTEND
is specified,
.Fa pmatch
must point to at least one
.Ft regmatch_t
.Po
even if
.Fa nmatch
is 0 or
.Dv REG_NOSUB
was specified
.Pc ,
to hold the input offsets for
.Dv REG_STARTEND .
Use for output is still entirely controlled by
.Fa nmatch ;
if
.Fa nmatch
is 0 or
.Dv REG_NOSUB
was specified,
the value of
.Fa pmatch Ns Li [0]
will not be changed by a successful
.Fn regexec .
.Pp
The
.Fn regerror
function
maps a non-zero
.Fa errcode
from either
.Fn regcomp
or
.Fn regexec
to a human-readable, printable message.
If
.Fa preg
is
.Pf non- Dv NULL ,
the error code should have arisen from use of
the
.Ft regex_t
pointed to by
.Fa preg ,
and if the error code came from
.Fn regcomp ,
it should have been the result from the most recent
.Fn regcomp
using that
.Ft regex_t
.Po
the
.Fn regerror
may be able to supply a more detailed message using information
from the
.Ft regex_t
.Pc .
The
.Fn regerror
function
places the NUL-terminated message into the buffer pointed to by
.Fa errbuf ,
limiting the length
.Pq including the Tn NUL
to at most
.Fa errbuf_size
bytes.
If the whole message will not fit,
as much of it as will fit before the terminating NUL is supplied.
In any case,
the returned value is the size of buffer needed to hold the whole
message
.Pq including terminating Tn NUL .
If
.Fa errbuf_size
is 0,
.Fa errbuf
is ignored but the return value is still correct.
.Pp
If the
.Fa errcode
given to
.Fn regerror
is first
.Em or Ap ed
with
.Dv REG_ITOA ,
the
.Dq message
that results is the printable name of the error code,
e.g.\&
.Dq Dv REG_NOMATCH ,
rather than an explanation thereof.
If
.Fa errcode
is
.Dv REG_ATOI ,
then
.Fa preg
shall be
.Pf non- Dv NULL
and the
.Fa re_endp
member of the structure it points to
must point to the printable name of an error code;
in this case, the result in
.Fa errbuf
is the decimal digits of
the numeric value of the error code
.Pq 0 if the name is not recognized .
.Dv REG_ITOA
and
.Dv REG_ATOI
are intended primarily as debugging facilities;
they are extensions,
compatible with but not specified by
.St -p1003.2 ,
and should be used with
caution in software intended to be portable to other systems.
Be warned also that they are considered experimental and changes are possible.
.Pp
The
.Fn regfree
function
frees any dynamically-allocated storage associated with the compiled RE
pointed to by
.Fa preg .
The remaining
.Ft regex_t
is no longer a valid compiled RE
and the effect of supplying it to
.Fn regexec
or
.Fn regerror
is undefined.
.Pp
None of these functions references global variables except for tables
of constants;
all are safe for use from multiple threads if the arguments are safe.
.Pp
The
.Fn regnsub
and
.Fn regasub
functions perform substitutions using
.Xr sed 1
like syntax.
They return the length of the string that would have been created
if there was enough space or \-1 on error, setting
.Va errno .
The result
is being placed in
.Fa buf
which is user-supplied in
.Fn regnsub
and dynamically allocated in
.Fn regasub .
The
.Fa sub
argument contains a substitution string which might refer to the first
9 regular expression strings using
.So Ic \e Ns Ar N Sc
to refer to the nth matched
item, or
.Ql &
.Po
which is equivalent to
.Ic \e0
.Pc
to refer to the full match.
The
.Fa rm
array must be at least 10 elements long, and should contain the result
of the matches from a previous
.Fn regexec
call.
Only 10 elements of the
.Fa rm
array can be used.
The
.Fa str
argument contains the source string to apply the transformation to.
.Sh IMPLEMENTATION CHOICES
There are a number of decisions that
.St -p1003.2
leaves up to the implementor,
either by explicitly saying
.Dq undefined
or by virtue of them being
forbidden by the RE grammar.
This implementation treats them as follows.
.Pp
See
.Xr re_format 7
for a discussion of the definition of case-independent matching.
.Pp
There is no particular limit on the length of REs,
except insofar as memory is limited.
Memory usage is approximately linear in RE size, and largely insensitive
to RE complexity, except for bounded repetitions.
See
.Sx BUGS
for one short RE using them
that will run almost any system out of memory.
.Pp
A backslashed character other than one specifically given a magic meaning
by
.St -p1003.2
.Po
such magic meanings occur only in obsolete
.Pq Dq basic
REs
.Pc
is taken as an ordinary character.
.Pp
Any unmatched
.Ql \&[
is a
.Dv REG_EBRACK
error.
.Pp
Equivalence classes cannot begin or end bracket-expression ranges.
The endpoint of one range cannot begin another.
.Pp
.Dv RE_DUP_MAX ,
the limit on repetition counts in bounded repetitions, is 255.
.Pp
A repetition operator
.Po
.Ql \&? ,
.Ql \&* ,
.Ql \&+ ,
or bounds
.Pc
cannot follow another
repetition operator.
A repetition operator cannot begin an expression or subexpression
or follow
.Ql \&^
or
.Ql \&| .
.Pp
.Ql \&|
cannot appear first or last in a (sub)expression or after another
.Ql \&| ,
i.e., an operand of
.Ql \&|
cannot be an empty subexpression.
An empty parenthesized subexpression,
.Ql "()" ,
is legal and matches an
empty (sub)string.
An empty string is not a legal RE.
.Pp
A
.Ql \&{
followed by a digit is considered the beginning of bounds for a
bounded repetition, which must then follow the syntax for bounds.
A
.Ql \&{
.Em not
followed by a digit is considered an ordinary character.
.Pp
.Ql \&^
and
.Ql \&$
beginning and ending subexpressions in obsolete
.Pq Dq basic
REs are anchors, not ordinary characters.
.Sh RETURN VALUES
Non-zero error codes from
.Fn regcomp
and
.Fn regexec
include the following:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width ".Dv REG_ECOLLATE" -compact
.It Dv REG_NOMATCH
The
.Fn regexec
function
failed to match
.It Dv REG_BADPAT
invalid regular expression
.It Dv REG_ECOLLATE
invalid collating element
.It Dv REG_ECTYPE
invalid character class
.It Dv REG_EESCAPE
.Ql \e
applied to unescapable character
.It Dv REG_ESUBREG
invalid backreference number
.It Dv REG_EBRACK
brackets
.Ql "[ ]"
not balanced
.It Dv REG_EPAREN
parentheses
.Ql "( )"
not balanced
.It Dv REG_EBRACE
braces
.Ql "{ }"
not balanced
.It Dv REG_BADBR
invalid repetition count(s) in
.Ql "{ }"
.It Dv REG_ERANGE
invalid character range in
.Ql "[ ]"
.It Dv REG_ESPACE
ran out of memory
.It Dv REG_BADRPT
.Ql \&? ,
.Ql \&* ,
or
.Ql \&+
operand invalid
.It Dv REG_EMPTY
empty (sub)expression
.It Dv REG_ASSERT
cannot happen - you found a bug
.It Dv REG_INVARG
invalid argument, e.g.\& negative-length string
.It Dv REG_ILLSEQ
illegal byte sequence (bad multibyte character)
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr grep 1 ,
.Xr re_format 7
.Pp
.St -p1003.2 ,
sections 2.8
.Pq Regular Expression Notation
and
B.5
.Pq Tn C No Binding for Regular Expression Matching .
.Sh HISTORY
Originally written by
.An Henry Spencer .
Altered for inclusion in the
.Bx 4.4
distribution.
.Pp
The
.Fn regnsub
and
.Fn regasub
functions appeared in
.Nx 8 .
.Sh BUGS
This is an alpha release with known defects.
Please report problems.
.Pp
The back-reference code is subtle and doubts linger about its correctness
in complex cases.
.Pp
The
.Fn regexec
function
performance is poor.
This will improve with later releases.
The
.Fa nmatch
argument
exceeding 0 is expensive;
.Fa nmatch
exceeding 1 is worse.
The
.Fn regexec
function
is largely insensitive to RE complexity
.Em except
that back
references are massively expensive.
RE length does matter; in particular, there is a strong speed bonus
for keeping RE length under about 30 characters,
with most special characters counting roughly double.
.Pp
The
.Fn regcomp
function
implements bounded repetitions by macro expansion,
which is costly in time and space if counts are large
or bounded repetitions are nested.
An RE like, say,
.Ql "((((a{1,100}){1,100}){1,100}){1,100}){1,100}"
will (eventually) run almost any existing machine out of swap space.
.Pp
There are suspected problems with response to obscure error conditions.
Notably,
certain kinds of internal overflow,
produced only by truly enormous REs or by multiply nested bounded repetitions,
are probably not handled well.
.Pp
Due to a mistake in
.St -p1003.2 ,
things like
.Ql "a)b"
are legal REs because
.Ql \&)
is
a special character only in the presence of a previous unmatched
.Ql \&( .
This cannot be fixed until the spec is fixed.
.Pp
The standard's definition of back references is vague.
For example, does
.Ql "a\e(\e(b\e)*\e2\e)*d"
match
.Ql "abbbd" ?
Until the standard is clarified,
behavior in such cases should not be relied on.
.Pp
The implementation of word-boundary matching is a bit of a kludge,
and bugs may lurk in combinations of word-boundary matching and anchoring.
.Pp
Word-boundary matching does not work properly in multibyte locales.