Annotation of win32/pcre/NEWS, revision 1.1
1.1 ! misha 1: News about PCRE releases
! 2: ------------------------
! 3:
! 4:
! 5: Release 7.7 07-May-08
! 6: ---------------------
! 7:
! 8: This is once again mainly a bug-fix release, but there are a couple of new
! 9: features.
! 10:
! 11:
! 12: Release 7.6 28-Jan-08
! 13: ---------------------
! 14:
! 15: The main reason for having this release so soon after 7.5 is because it fixes a
! 16: potential buffer overflow problem in pcre_compile() when run in UTF-8 mode. In
! 17: addition, the CMake configuration files have been brought up to date.
! 18:
! 19:
! 20: Release 7.5 10-Jan-08
! 21: ---------------------
! 22:
! 23: This is mainly a bug-fix release. However the ability to link pcregrep with
! 24: libz or libbz2 and the ability to link pcretest with libreadline have been
! 25: added. Also the --line-offsets and --file-offsets options were added to
! 26: pcregrep.
! 27:
! 28:
! 29: Release 7.4 21-Sep-07
! 30: ---------------------
! 31:
! 32: The only change of specification is the addition of options to control whether
! 33: \R matches any Unicode line ending (the default) or just CR, LF, and CRLF.
! 34: Otherwise, the changes are bug fixes and a refactoring to reduce the number of
! 35: relocations needed in a shared library. There have also been some documentation
! 36: updates, in particular, some more information about using CMake to build PCRE
! 37: has been added to the NON-UNIX-USE file.
! 38:
! 39:
! 40: Release 7.3 28-Aug-07
! 41: ---------------------
! 42:
! 43: Most changes are bug fixes. Some that are not:
! 44:
! 45: 1. There is some support for Perl 5.10's experimental "backtracking control
! 46: verbs" such as (*PRUNE).
! 47:
! 48: 2. UTF-8 checking is now as per RFC 3629 instead of RFC 2279; this is more
! 49: restrictive in the strings it accepts.
! 50:
! 51: 3. Checking for potential integer overflow has been made more dynamic, and as a
! 52: consequence there is no longer a hard limit on the size of a subpattern that
! 53: has a limited repeat count.
! 54:
! 55: 4. When CRLF is a valid line-ending sequence, pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec()
! 56: no longer advance by two characters instead of one when an unanchored match
! 57: fails at CRLF if there are explicit CR or LF matches within the pattern.
! 58: This gets rid of some anomalous effects that previously occurred.
! 59:
! 60: 5. Some PCRE-specific settings for varying the newline options at the start of
! 61: a pattern have been added.
! 62:
! 63:
! 64: Release 7.2 19-Jun-07
! 65: ---------------------
! 66:
! 67: WARNING: saved patterns that were compiled by earlier versions of PCRE must be
! 68: recompiled for use with 7.2 (necessitated by the addition of \K, \h, \H, \v,
! 69: and \V).
! 70:
! 71: Correction to the notes for 7.1: the note about shared libraries for Windows is
! 72: wrong. Previously, three libraries were built, but each could function
! 73: independently. For example, the pcreposix library also included all the
! 74: functions from the basic pcre library. The change is that the three libraries
! 75: are no longer independent. They are like the Unix libraries. To use the
! 76: pcreposix functions, for example, you need to link with both the pcreposix and
! 77: the basic pcre library.
! 78:
! 79: Some more features from Perl 5.10 have been added:
! 80:
! 81: (?-n) and (?+n) relative references for recursion and subroutines.
! 82:
! 83: (?(-n) and (?(+n) relative references as conditions.
! 84:
! 85: \k{name} and \g{name} are synonyms for \k<name>.
! 86:
! 87: \K to reset the start of the matched string; for example, (foo)\Kbar
! 88: matches bar preceded by foo, but only sets bar as the matched string.
! 89:
! 90: (?| introduces a group where the capturing parentheses in each alternative
! 91: start from the same number; for example, (?|(abc)|(xyz)) sets capturing
! 92: parentheses number 1 in both cases.
! 93:
! 94: \h, \H, \v, \V match horizontal and vertical whitespace, respectively.
! 95:
! 96:
! 97: Release 7.1 24-Apr-07
! 98: ---------------------
! 99:
! 100: There is only one new feature in this release: a linebreak setting of
! 101: PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF. It is a cut-down version of PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY, which
! 102: recognizes only CRLF, CR, and LF as linebreaks.
! 103:
! 104: A few bugs are fixed (see ChangeLog for details), but the major change is a
! 105: complete re-implementation of the build system. This now has full Autotools
! 106: support and so is now "standard" in some sense. It should help with compiling
! 107: PCRE in a wide variety of environments.
! 108:
! 109: NOTE: when building shared libraries for Windows, three dlls are now built,
! 110: called libpcre, libpcreposix, and libpcrecpp. Previously, everything was
! 111: included in a single dll.
! 112:
! 113: Another important change is that the dftables auxiliary program is no longer
! 114: compiled and run at "make" time by default. Instead, a default set of character
! 115: tables (assuming ASCII coding) is used. If you want to use dftables to generate
! 116: the character tables as previously, add --enable-rebuild-chartables to the
! 117: "configure" command. You must do this if you are compiling PCRE to run on a
! 118: system that uses EBCDIC code.
! 119:
! 120: There is a discussion about character tables in the README file. The default is
! 121: not to use dftables so that that there is no problem when cross-compiling.
! 122:
! 123:
! 124: Release 7.0 19-Dec-06
! 125: ---------------------
! 126:
! 127: This release has a new major number because there have been some internal
! 128: upheavals to facilitate the addition of new optimizations and other facilities,
! 129: and to make subsequent maintenance and extension easier. Compilation is likely
! 130: to be a bit slower, but there should be no major effect on runtime performance.
! 131: Previously compiled patterns are NOT upwards compatible with this release. If
! 132: you have saved compiled patterns from a previous release, you will have to
! 133: re-compile them. Important changes that are visible to users are:
! 134:
! 135: 1. The Unicode property tables have been updated to Unicode 5.0.0, which adds
! 136: some more scripts.
! 137:
! 138: 2. The option PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY causes PCRE to recognize any Unicode newline
! 139: sequence as a newline.
! 140:
! 141: 3. The \R escape matches a single Unicode newline sequence as a single unit.
! 142:
! 143: 4. New features that will appear in Perl 5.10 are now in PCRE. These include
! 144: alternative Perl syntax for named parentheses, and Perl syntax for
! 145: recursion.
! 146:
! 147: 5. The C++ wrapper interface has been extended by the addition of a
! 148: QuoteMeta function and the ability to allow copy construction and
! 149: assignment.
! 150:
! 151: For a complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file.
! 152:
! 153:
! 154: Release 6.7 04-Jul-06
! 155: ---------------------
! 156:
! 157: The main additions to this release are the ability to use the same name for
! 158: multiple sets of parentheses, and support for CRLF line endings in both the
! 159: library and pcregrep (and in pcretest for testing).
! 160:
! 161: Thanks to Ian Taylor, the stack usage for many kinds of pattern has been
! 162: significantly reduced for certain subject strings.
! 163:
! 164:
! 165: Release 6.5 01-Feb-06
! 166: ---------------------
! 167:
! 168: Important changes in this release:
! 169:
! 170: 1. A number of new features have been added to pcregrep.
! 171:
! 172: 2. The Unicode property tables have been updated to Unicode 4.1.0, and the
! 173: supported properties have been extended with script names such as "Arabic",
! 174: and the derived properties "Any" and "L&". This has necessitated a change to
! 175: the interal format of compiled patterns. Any saved compiled patterns that
! 176: use \p or \P must be recompiled.
! 177:
! 178: 3. The specification of recursion in patterns has been changed so that all
! 179: recursive subpatterns are automatically treated as atomic groups. Thus, for
! 180: example, (?R) is treated as if it were (?>(?R)). This is necessary because
! 181: otherwise there are situations where recursion does not work.
! 182:
! 183: See the ChangeLog for a complete list of changes, which include a number of bug
! 184: fixes and tidies.
! 185:
! 186:
! 187: Release 6.0 07-Jun-05
! 188: ---------------------
! 189:
! 190: The release number has been increased to 6.0 because of the addition of several
! 191: major new pieces of functionality.
! 192:
! 193: A new function, pcre_dfa_exec(), which implements pattern matching using a DFA
! 194: algorithm, has been added. This has a number of advantages for certain cases,
! 195: though it does run more slowly, and lacks the ability to capture substrings. On
! 196: the other hand, it does find all matches, not just the first, and it works
! 197: better for partial matching. The pcrematching man page discusses the
! 198: differences.
! 199:
! 200: The pcretest program has been enhanced so that it can make use of the new
! 201: pcre_dfa_exec() matching function and the extra features it provides.
! 202:
! 203: The distribution now includes a C++ wrapper library. This is built
! 204: automatically if a C++ compiler is found. The pcrecpp man page discusses this
! 205: interface.
! 206:
! 207: The code itself has been re-organized into many more files, one for each
! 208: function, so it no longer requires everything to be linked in when static
! 209: linkage is used. As a consequence, some internal functions have had to have
! 210: their names exposed. These functions all have names starting with _pcre_. They
! 211: are undocumented, and are not intended for use by outside callers.
! 212:
! 213: The pcregrep program has been enhanced with new functionality such as
! 214: multiline-matching and options for output more matching context. See the
! 215: ChangeLog for a complete list of changes to the library and the utility
! 216: programs.
! 217:
! 218:
! 219: Release 5.0 13-Sep-04
! 220: ---------------------
! 221:
! 222: The licence under which PCRE is released has been changed to the more
! 223: conventional "BSD" licence.
! 224:
! 225: In the code, some bugs have been fixed, and there are also some major changes
! 226: in this release (which is why I've increased the number to 5.0). Some changes
! 227: are internal rearrangements, and some provide a number of new facilities. The
! 228: new features are:
! 229:
! 230: 1. There's an "automatic callout" feature that inserts callouts before every
! 231: item in the regex, and there's a new callout field that gives the position
! 232: in the pattern - useful for debugging and tracing.
! 233:
! 234: 2. The extra_data structure can now be used to pass in a set of character
! 235: tables at exec time. This is useful if compiled regex are saved and re-used
! 236: at a later time when the tables may not be at the same address. If the
! 237: default internal tables are used, the pointer saved with the compiled
! 238: pattern is now set to NULL, which means that you don't need to do anything
! 239: special unless you are using custom tables.
! 240:
! 241: 3. It is possible, with some restrictions on the content of the regex, to
! 242: request "partial" matching. A special return code is given if all of the
! 243: subject string matched part of the regex. This could be useful for testing
! 244: an input field as it is being typed.
! 245:
! 246: 4. There is now some optional support for Unicode character properties, which
! 247: means that the patterns items such as \p{Lu} and \X can now be used. Only
! 248: the general category properties are supported. If PCRE is compiled with this
! 249: support, an additional 90K data structure is include, which increases the
! 250: size of the library dramatically.
! 251:
! 252: 5. There is support for saving compiled patterns and re-using them later.
! 253:
! 254: 6. There is support for running regular expressions that were compiled on a
! 255: different host with the opposite endianness.
! 256:
! 257: 7. The pcretest program has been extended to accommodate the new features.
! 258:
! 259: The main internal rearrangement is that sequences of literal characters are no
! 260: longer handled as strings. Instead, each character is handled on its own. This
! 261: makes some UTF-8 handling easier, and makes the support of partial matching
! 262: possible. Compiled patterns containing long literal strings will be larger as a
! 263: result of this change; I hope that performance will not be much affected.
! 264:
! 265:
! 266: Release 4.5 01-Dec-03
! 267: ---------------------
! 268:
! 269: Again mainly a bug-fix and tidying release, with only a couple of new features:
! 270:
! 271: 1. It's possible now to compile PCRE so that it does not use recursive
! 272: function calls when matching. Instead it gets memory from the heap. This slows
! 273: things down, but may be necessary on systems with limited stacks.
! 274:
! 275: 2. UTF-8 string checking has been tightened to reject overlong sequences and to
! 276: check that a starting offset points to the start of a character. Failure of the
! 277: latter returns a new error code: PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8_OFFSET.
! 278:
! 279: 3. PCRE can now be compiled for systems that use EBCDIC code.
! 280:
! 281:
! 282: Release 4.4 21-Aug-03
! 283: ---------------------
! 284:
! 285: This is mainly a bug-fix and tidying release. The only new feature is that PCRE
! 286: checks UTF-8 strings for validity by default. There is an option to suppress
! 287: this, just in case anybody wants that teeny extra bit of performance.
! 288:
! 289:
! 290: Releases 4.1 - 4.3
! 291: ------------------
! 292:
! 293: Sorry, I forgot about updating the NEWS file for these releases. Please take a
! 294: look at ChangeLog.
! 295:
! 296:
! 297: Release 4.0 17-Feb-03
! 298: ---------------------
! 299:
! 300: There have been a lot of changes for the 4.0 release, adding additional
! 301: functionality and mending bugs. Below is a list of the highlights of the new
! 302: functionality. For full details of these features, please consult the
! 303: documentation. For a complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file.
! 304:
! 305: 1. Support for Perl's \Q...\E escapes.
! 306:
! 307: 2. "Possessive quantifiers" ?+, *+, ++, and {,}+ which come from Sun's Java
! 308: package. They provide some syntactic sugar for simple cases of "atomic
! 309: grouping".
! 310:
! 311: 3. Support for the \G assertion. It is true when the current matching position
! 312: is at the start point of the match.
! 313:
! 314: 4. A new feature that provides some of the functionality that Perl provides
! 315: with (?{...}). The facility is termed a "callout". The way it is done in PCRE
! 316: is for the caller to provide an optional function, by setting pcre_callout to
! 317: its entry point. To get the function called, the regex must include (?C) at
! 318: appropriate points.
! 319:
! 320: 5. Support for recursive calls to individual subpatterns. This makes it really
! 321: easy to get totally confused.
! 322:
! 323: 6. Support for named subpatterns. The Python syntax (?P<name>...) is used to
! 324: name a group.
! 325:
! 326: 7. Several extensions to UTF-8 support; it is now fairly complete. There is an
! 327: option for pcregrep to make it operate in UTF-8 mode.
! 328:
! 329: 8. The single man page has been split into a number of separate man pages.
! 330: These also give rise to individual HTML pages which are put in a separate
! 331: directory. There is an index.html page that lists them all. Some hyperlinking
! 332: between the pages has been installed.
! 333:
! 334:
! 335: Release 3.5 15-Aug-01
! 336: ---------------------
! 337:
! 338: 1. The configuring system has been upgraded to use later versions of autoconf
! 339: and libtool. By default it builds both a shared and a static library if the OS
! 340: supports it. You can use --disable-shared or --disable-static on the configure
! 341: command if you want only one of them.
! 342:
! 343: 2. The pcretest utility is now installed along with pcregrep because it is
! 344: useful for users (to test regexs) and by doing this, it automatically gets
! 345: relinked by libtool. The documentation has been turned into a man page, so
! 346: there are now .1, .txt, and .html versions in /doc.
! 347:
! 348: 3. Upgrades to pcregrep:
! 349: (i) Added long-form option names like gnu grep.
! 350: (ii) Added --help to list all options with an explanatory phrase.
! 351: (iii) Added -r, --recursive to recurse into sub-directories.
! 352: (iv) Added -f, --file to read patterns from a file.
! 353:
! 354: 4. Added --enable-newline-is-cr and --enable-newline-is-lf to the configure
! 355: script, to force use of CR or LF instead of \n in the source. On non-Unix
! 356: systems, the value can be set in config.h.
! 357:
! 358: 5. The limit of 200 on non-capturing parentheses is a _nesting_ limit, not an
! 359: absolute limit. Changed the text of the error message to make this clear, and
! 360: likewise updated the man page.
! 361:
! 362: 6. The limit of 99 on the number of capturing subpatterns has been removed.
! 363: The new limit is 65535, which I hope will not be a "real" limit.
! 364:
! 365:
! 366: Release 3.3 01-Aug-00
! 367: ---------------------
! 368:
! 369: There is some support for UTF-8 character strings. This is incomplete and
! 370: experimental. The documentation describes what is and what is not implemented.
! 371: Otherwise, this is just a bug-fixing release.
! 372:
! 373:
! 374: Release 3.0 01-Feb-00
! 375: ---------------------
! 376:
! 377: 1. A "configure" script is now used to configure PCRE for Unix systems. It
! 378: builds a Makefile, a config.h file, and the pcre-config script.
! 379:
! 380: 2. PCRE is built as a shared library by default.
! 381:
! 382: 3. There is support for POSIX classes such as [:alpha:].
! 383:
! 384: 5. There is an experimental recursion feature.
! 385:
! 386: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
! 387: IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSIONS BEFORE 2.00
! 388:
! 389: Please note that there has been a change in the API such that a larger
! 390: ovector is required at matching time, to provide some additional workspace.
! 391: The new man page has details. This change was necessary in order to support
! 392: some of the new functionality in Perl 5.005.
! 393:
! 394: IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSION 2.00
! 395:
! 396: Another (I hope this is the last!) change has been made to the API for the
! 397: pcre_compile() function. An additional argument has been added to make it
! 398: possible to pass over a pointer to character tables built in the current
! 399: locale by pcre_maketables(). To use the default tables, this new arguement
! 400: should be passed as NULL.
! 401:
! 402: IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSION 2.05
! 403:
! 404: Yet another (and again I hope this really is the last) change has been made
! 405: to the API for the pcre_exec() function. An additional argument has been
! 406: added to make it possible to start the match other than at the start of the
! 407: subject string. This is important if there are lookbehinds. The new man
! 408: page has the details, but you just want to convert existing programs, all
! 409: you need to do is to stick in a new fifth argument to pcre_exec(), with a
! 410: value of zero. For example, change
! 411:
! 412: pcre_exec(pattern, extra, subject, length, options, ovec, ovecsize)
! 413: to
! 414: pcre_exec(pattern, extra, subject, length, 0, options, ovec, ovecsize)
! 415:
! 416: ****
E-mail:
![[BACK]](/cvsweb/icons/back.gif){kind=icon}
Return to NEWS CVS log ![[TXT]](/cvsweb/icons/text.gif){kind=icon}
![[DIR]](/cvsweb/icons/dir.gif){kind=icon}
Up to [parser3project] / win32 / pcre