Annotation of win32/pcre/NEWS, revision 1.3
1.1 misha 1: News about PCRE releases
2: ------------------------
3:
1.3 ! misha 4: Release 7.9 11-Apr-09
! 5: ---------------------
! 6:
! 7: Mostly bugfixes and tidies with just a couple of minor functional additions.
! 8:
1.1 misha 9:
1.2 misha 10: Release 7.8 05-Sep-08
11: ---------------------
12:
13: More bug fixes, plus a performance improvement in Unicode character property
14: lookup.
15:
16:
1.1 misha 17: Release 7.7 07-May-08
18: ---------------------
19:
20: This is once again mainly a bug-fix release, but there are a couple of new
21: features.
22:
23:
24: Release 7.6 28-Jan-08
25: ---------------------
26:
27: The main reason for having this release so soon after 7.5 is because it fixes a
28: potential buffer overflow problem in pcre_compile() when run in UTF-8 mode. In
29: addition, the CMake configuration files have been brought up to date.
30:
31:
32: Release 7.5 10-Jan-08
33: ---------------------
34:
35: This is mainly a bug-fix release. However the ability to link pcregrep with
36: libz or libbz2 and the ability to link pcretest with libreadline have been
37: added. Also the --line-offsets and --file-offsets options were added to
38: pcregrep.
39:
40:
41: Release 7.4 21-Sep-07
42: ---------------------
43:
44: The only change of specification is the addition of options to control whether
45: \R matches any Unicode line ending (the default) or just CR, LF, and CRLF.
46: Otherwise, the changes are bug fixes and a refactoring to reduce the number of
47: relocations needed in a shared library. There have also been some documentation
48: updates, in particular, some more information about using CMake to build PCRE
49: has been added to the NON-UNIX-USE file.
50:
51:
52: Release 7.3 28-Aug-07
53: ---------------------
54:
55: Most changes are bug fixes. Some that are not:
56:
57: 1. There is some support for Perl 5.10's experimental "backtracking control
58: verbs" such as (*PRUNE).
59:
60: 2. UTF-8 checking is now as per RFC 3629 instead of RFC 2279; this is more
61: restrictive in the strings it accepts.
62:
63: 3. Checking for potential integer overflow has been made more dynamic, and as a
64: consequence there is no longer a hard limit on the size of a subpattern that
65: has a limited repeat count.
66:
67: 4. When CRLF is a valid line-ending sequence, pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec()
68: no longer advance by two characters instead of one when an unanchored match
69: fails at CRLF if there are explicit CR or LF matches within the pattern.
70: This gets rid of some anomalous effects that previously occurred.
71:
72: 5. Some PCRE-specific settings for varying the newline options at the start of
73: a pattern have been added.
74:
75:
76: Release 7.2 19-Jun-07
77: ---------------------
78:
79: WARNING: saved patterns that were compiled by earlier versions of PCRE must be
80: recompiled for use with 7.2 (necessitated by the addition of \K, \h, \H, \v,
81: and \V).
82:
83: Correction to the notes for 7.1: the note about shared libraries for Windows is
84: wrong. Previously, three libraries were built, but each could function
85: independently. For example, the pcreposix library also included all the
86: functions from the basic pcre library. The change is that the three libraries
87: are no longer independent. They are like the Unix libraries. To use the
88: pcreposix functions, for example, you need to link with both the pcreposix and
89: the basic pcre library.
90:
91: Some more features from Perl 5.10 have been added:
92:
93: (?-n) and (?+n) relative references for recursion and subroutines.
94:
95: (?(-n) and (?(+n) relative references as conditions.
96:
97: \k{name} and \g{name} are synonyms for \k<name>.
98:
99: \K to reset the start of the matched string; for example, (foo)\Kbar
100: matches bar preceded by foo, but only sets bar as the matched string.
101:
102: (?| introduces a group where the capturing parentheses in each alternative
103: start from the same number; for example, (?|(abc)|(xyz)) sets capturing
104: parentheses number 1 in both cases.
105:
106: \h, \H, \v, \V match horizontal and vertical whitespace, respectively.
107:
108:
109: Release 7.1 24-Apr-07
110: ---------------------
111:
112: There is only one new feature in this release: a linebreak setting of
113: PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF. It is a cut-down version of PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY, which
114: recognizes only CRLF, CR, and LF as linebreaks.
115:
116: A few bugs are fixed (see ChangeLog for details), but the major change is a
117: complete re-implementation of the build system. This now has full Autotools
118: support and so is now "standard" in some sense. It should help with compiling
119: PCRE in a wide variety of environments.
120:
121: NOTE: when building shared libraries for Windows, three dlls are now built,
122: called libpcre, libpcreposix, and libpcrecpp. Previously, everything was
123: included in a single dll.
124:
125: Another important change is that the dftables auxiliary program is no longer
126: compiled and run at "make" time by default. Instead, a default set of character
127: tables (assuming ASCII coding) is used. If you want to use dftables to generate
128: the character tables as previously, add --enable-rebuild-chartables to the
129: "configure" command. You must do this if you are compiling PCRE to run on a
130: system that uses EBCDIC code.
131:
132: There is a discussion about character tables in the README file. The default is
133: not to use dftables so that that there is no problem when cross-compiling.
134:
135:
136: Release 7.0 19-Dec-06
137: ---------------------
138:
139: This release has a new major number because there have been some internal
140: upheavals to facilitate the addition of new optimizations and other facilities,
141: and to make subsequent maintenance and extension easier. Compilation is likely
142: to be a bit slower, but there should be no major effect on runtime performance.
143: Previously compiled patterns are NOT upwards compatible with this release. If
144: you have saved compiled patterns from a previous release, you will have to
145: re-compile them. Important changes that are visible to users are:
146:
147: 1. The Unicode property tables have been updated to Unicode 5.0.0, which adds
148: some more scripts.
149:
150: 2. The option PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY causes PCRE to recognize any Unicode newline
151: sequence as a newline.
152:
153: 3. The \R escape matches a single Unicode newline sequence as a single unit.
154:
155: 4. New features that will appear in Perl 5.10 are now in PCRE. These include
156: alternative Perl syntax for named parentheses, and Perl syntax for
157: recursion.
158:
159: 5. The C++ wrapper interface has been extended by the addition of a
160: QuoteMeta function and the ability to allow copy construction and
161: assignment.
162:
163: For a complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file.
164:
165:
166: Release 6.7 04-Jul-06
167: ---------------------
168:
169: The main additions to this release are the ability to use the same name for
170: multiple sets of parentheses, and support for CRLF line endings in both the
171: library and pcregrep (and in pcretest for testing).
172:
173: Thanks to Ian Taylor, the stack usage for many kinds of pattern has been
174: significantly reduced for certain subject strings.
175:
176:
177: Release 6.5 01-Feb-06
178: ---------------------
179:
180: Important changes in this release:
181:
182: 1. A number of new features have been added to pcregrep.
183:
184: 2. The Unicode property tables have been updated to Unicode 4.1.0, and the
185: supported properties have been extended with script names such as "Arabic",
186: and the derived properties "Any" and "L&". This has necessitated a change to
187: the interal format of compiled patterns. Any saved compiled patterns that
188: use \p or \P must be recompiled.
189:
190: 3. The specification of recursion in patterns has been changed so that all
191: recursive subpatterns are automatically treated as atomic groups. Thus, for
192: example, (?R) is treated as if it were (?>(?R)). This is necessary because
193: otherwise there are situations where recursion does not work.
194:
195: See the ChangeLog for a complete list of changes, which include a number of bug
196: fixes and tidies.
197:
198:
199: Release 6.0 07-Jun-05
200: ---------------------
201:
202: The release number has been increased to 6.0 because of the addition of several
203: major new pieces of functionality.
204:
205: A new function, pcre_dfa_exec(), which implements pattern matching using a DFA
206: algorithm, has been added. This has a number of advantages for certain cases,
207: though it does run more slowly, and lacks the ability to capture substrings. On
208: the other hand, it does find all matches, not just the first, and it works
209: better for partial matching. The pcrematching man page discusses the
210: differences.
211:
212: The pcretest program has been enhanced so that it can make use of the new
213: pcre_dfa_exec() matching function and the extra features it provides.
214:
215: The distribution now includes a C++ wrapper library. This is built
216: automatically if a C++ compiler is found. The pcrecpp man page discusses this
217: interface.
218:
219: The code itself has been re-organized into many more files, one for each
220: function, so it no longer requires everything to be linked in when static
221: linkage is used. As a consequence, some internal functions have had to have
222: their names exposed. These functions all have names starting with _pcre_. They
223: are undocumented, and are not intended for use by outside callers.
224:
225: The pcregrep program has been enhanced with new functionality such as
226: multiline-matching and options for output more matching context. See the
227: ChangeLog for a complete list of changes to the library and the utility
228: programs.
229:
230:
231: Release 5.0 13-Sep-04
232: ---------------------
233:
234: The licence under which PCRE is released has been changed to the more
235: conventional "BSD" licence.
236:
237: In the code, some bugs have been fixed, and there are also some major changes
238: in this release (which is why I've increased the number to 5.0). Some changes
239: are internal rearrangements, and some provide a number of new facilities. The
240: new features are:
241:
242: 1. There's an "automatic callout" feature that inserts callouts before every
243: item in the regex, and there's a new callout field that gives the position
244: in the pattern - useful for debugging and tracing.
245:
246: 2. The extra_data structure can now be used to pass in a set of character
247: tables at exec time. This is useful if compiled regex are saved and re-used
248: at a later time when the tables may not be at the same address. If the
249: default internal tables are used, the pointer saved with the compiled
250: pattern is now set to NULL, which means that you don't need to do anything
251: special unless you are using custom tables.
252:
253: 3. It is possible, with some restrictions on the content of the regex, to
254: request "partial" matching. A special return code is given if all of the
255: subject string matched part of the regex. This could be useful for testing
256: an input field as it is being typed.
257:
258: 4. There is now some optional support for Unicode character properties, which
259: means that the patterns items such as \p{Lu} and \X can now be used. Only
260: the general category properties are supported. If PCRE is compiled with this
261: support, an additional 90K data structure is include, which increases the
262: size of the library dramatically.
263:
264: 5. There is support for saving compiled patterns and re-using them later.
265:
266: 6. There is support for running regular expressions that were compiled on a
267: different host with the opposite endianness.
268:
269: 7. The pcretest program has been extended to accommodate the new features.
270:
271: The main internal rearrangement is that sequences of literal characters are no
272: longer handled as strings. Instead, each character is handled on its own. This
273: makes some UTF-8 handling easier, and makes the support of partial matching
274: possible. Compiled patterns containing long literal strings will be larger as a
275: result of this change; I hope that performance will not be much affected.
276:
277:
278: Release 4.5 01-Dec-03
279: ---------------------
280:
281: Again mainly a bug-fix and tidying release, with only a couple of new features:
282:
283: 1. It's possible now to compile PCRE so that it does not use recursive
284: function calls when matching. Instead it gets memory from the heap. This slows
285: things down, but may be necessary on systems with limited stacks.
286:
287: 2. UTF-8 string checking has been tightened to reject overlong sequences and to
288: check that a starting offset points to the start of a character. Failure of the
289: latter returns a new error code: PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8_OFFSET.
290:
291: 3. PCRE can now be compiled for systems that use EBCDIC code.
292:
293:
294: Release 4.4 21-Aug-03
295: ---------------------
296:
297: This is mainly a bug-fix and tidying release. The only new feature is that PCRE
298: checks UTF-8 strings for validity by default. There is an option to suppress
299: this, just in case anybody wants that teeny extra bit of performance.
300:
301:
302: Releases 4.1 - 4.3
303: ------------------
304:
305: Sorry, I forgot about updating the NEWS file for these releases. Please take a
306: look at ChangeLog.
307:
308:
309: Release 4.0 17-Feb-03
310: ---------------------
311:
312: There have been a lot of changes for the 4.0 release, adding additional
313: functionality and mending bugs. Below is a list of the highlights of the new
314: functionality. For full details of these features, please consult the
315: documentation. For a complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file.
316:
317: 1. Support for Perl's \Q...\E escapes.
318:
319: 2. "Possessive quantifiers" ?+, *+, ++, and {,}+ which come from Sun's Java
320: package. They provide some syntactic sugar for simple cases of "atomic
321: grouping".
322:
323: 3. Support for the \G assertion. It is true when the current matching position
324: is at the start point of the match.
325:
326: 4. A new feature that provides some of the functionality that Perl provides
327: with (?{...}). The facility is termed a "callout". The way it is done in PCRE
328: is for the caller to provide an optional function, by setting pcre_callout to
329: its entry point. To get the function called, the regex must include (?C) at
330: appropriate points.
331:
332: 5. Support for recursive calls to individual subpatterns. This makes it really
333: easy to get totally confused.
334:
335: 6. Support for named subpatterns. The Python syntax (?P<name>...) is used to
336: name a group.
337:
338: 7. Several extensions to UTF-8 support; it is now fairly complete. There is an
339: option for pcregrep to make it operate in UTF-8 mode.
340:
341: 8. The single man page has been split into a number of separate man pages.
342: These also give rise to individual HTML pages which are put in a separate
343: directory. There is an index.html page that lists them all. Some hyperlinking
344: between the pages has been installed.
345:
346:
347: Release 3.5 15-Aug-01
348: ---------------------
349:
350: 1. The configuring system has been upgraded to use later versions of autoconf
351: and libtool. By default it builds both a shared and a static library if the OS
352: supports it. You can use --disable-shared or --disable-static on the configure
353: command if you want only one of them.
354:
355: 2. The pcretest utility is now installed along with pcregrep because it is
356: useful for users (to test regexs) and by doing this, it automatically gets
357: relinked by libtool. The documentation has been turned into a man page, so
358: there are now .1, .txt, and .html versions in /doc.
359:
360: 3. Upgrades to pcregrep:
361: (i) Added long-form option names like gnu grep.
362: (ii) Added --help to list all options with an explanatory phrase.
363: (iii) Added -r, --recursive to recurse into sub-directories.
364: (iv) Added -f, --file to read patterns from a file.
365:
366: 4. Added --enable-newline-is-cr and --enable-newline-is-lf to the configure
367: script, to force use of CR or LF instead of \n in the source. On non-Unix
368: systems, the value can be set in config.h.
369:
370: 5. The limit of 200 on non-capturing parentheses is a _nesting_ limit, not an
371: absolute limit. Changed the text of the error message to make this clear, and
372: likewise updated the man page.
373:
374: 6. The limit of 99 on the number of capturing subpatterns has been removed.
375: The new limit is 65535, which I hope will not be a "real" limit.
376:
377:
378: Release 3.3 01-Aug-00
379: ---------------------
380:
381: There is some support for UTF-8 character strings. This is incomplete and
382: experimental. The documentation describes what is and what is not implemented.
383: Otherwise, this is just a bug-fixing release.
384:
385:
386: Release 3.0 01-Feb-00
387: ---------------------
388:
389: 1. A "configure" script is now used to configure PCRE for Unix systems. It
390: builds a Makefile, a config.h file, and the pcre-config script.
391:
392: 2. PCRE is built as a shared library by default.
393:
394: 3. There is support for POSIX classes such as [:alpha:].
395:
396: 5. There is an experimental recursion feature.
397:
398: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
399: IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSIONS BEFORE 2.00
400:
401: Please note that there has been a change in the API such that a larger
402: ovector is required at matching time, to provide some additional workspace.
403: The new man page has details. This change was necessary in order to support
404: some of the new functionality in Perl 5.005.
405:
406: IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSION 2.00
407:
408: Another (I hope this is the last!) change has been made to the API for the
409: pcre_compile() function. An additional argument has been added to make it
410: possible to pass over a pointer to character tables built in the current
411: locale by pcre_maketables(). To use the default tables, this new arguement
412: should be passed as NULL.
413:
414: IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSION 2.05
415:
416: Yet another (and again I hope this really is the last) change has been made
417: to the API for the pcre_exec() function. An additional argument has been
418: added to make it possible to start the match other than at the start of the
419: subject string. This is important if there are lookbehinds. The new man
420: page has the details, but you just want to convert existing programs, all
421: you need to do is to stick in a new fifth argument to pcre_exec(), with a
422: value of zero. For example, change
423:
424: pcre_exec(pattern, extra, subject, length, options, ovec, ovecsize)
425: to
426: pcre_exec(pattern, extra, subject, length, 0, options, ovec, ovecsize)
427:
428: ****
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