Annotation of win32/pcre/NEWS, revision 1.4
1.1 misha 1: News about PCRE releases
2: ------------------------
3:
1.4 ! misha 4: Release 8.10 25-Jun-2010
! 5: ------------------------
! 6:
! 7: There are two major additions: support for (*MARK) and friends, and the option
! 8: PCRE_UCP, which changes the behaviour of \b, \d, \s, and \w (and their
! 9: opposites) so that they make use of Unicode properties. There are also a number
! 10: of lesser new features, and several bugs have been fixed. A new option,
! 11: --line-buffered, has been added to pcregrep, for use when it is connected to
! 12: pipes.
! 13:
! 14:
! 15: Release 8.02 19-Mar-2010
! 16: ------------------------
! 17:
! 18: Another bug-fix release.
! 19:
! 20:
! 21: Release 8.01 19-Jan-2010
! 22: ------------------------
! 23:
! 24: This is a bug-fix release. Several bugs in the code itself and some bugs and
! 25: infelicities in the build system have been fixed.
! 26:
! 27:
! 28: Release 8.00 19-Oct-09
! 29: ----------------------
! 30:
! 31: Bugs have been fixed in the library and in pcregrep. There are also some
! 32: enhancements. Restrictions on patterns used for partial matching have been
! 33: removed, extra information is given for partial matches, the partial matching
! 34: process has been improved, and an option to make a partial match override a
! 35: full match is available. The "study" process has been enhanced by finding a
! 36: lower bound matching length. Groups with duplicate numbers may now have
! 37: duplicated names without the use of PCRE_DUPNAMES. However, they may not have
! 38: different names. The documentation has been revised to reflect these changes.
! 39: The version number has been expanded to 3 digits as it is clear that the rate
! 40: of change is not slowing down.
! 41:
! 42:
1.3 misha 43: Release 7.9 11-Apr-09
44: ---------------------
45:
46: Mostly bugfixes and tidies with just a couple of minor functional additions.
47:
1.1 misha 48:
1.2 misha 49: Release 7.8 05-Sep-08
50: ---------------------
51:
52: More bug fixes, plus a performance improvement in Unicode character property
53: lookup.
54:
55:
1.1 misha 56: Release 7.7 07-May-08
57: ---------------------
58:
59: This is once again mainly a bug-fix release, but there are a couple of new
60: features.
61:
62:
63: Release 7.6 28-Jan-08
64: ---------------------
65:
66: The main reason for having this release so soon after 7.5 is because it fixes a
67: potential buffer overflow problem in pcre_compile() when run in UTF-8 mode. In
68: addition, the CMake configuration files have been brought up to date.
69:
70:
71: Release 7.5 10-Jan-08
72: ---------------------
73:
74: This is mainly a bug-fix release. However the ability to link pcregrep with
75: libz or libbz2 and the ability to link pcretest with libreadline have been
76: added. Also the --line-offsets and --file-offsets options were added to
77: pcregrep.
78:
79:
80: Release 7.4 21-Sep-07
81: ---------------------
82:
83: The only change of specification is the addition of options to control whether
84: \R matches any Unicode line ending (the default) or just CR, LF, and CRLF.
85: Otherwise, the changes are bug fixes and a refactoring to reduce the number of
86: relocations needed in a shared library. There have also been some documentation
87: updates, in particular, some more information about using CMake to build PCRE
88: has been added to the NON-UNIX-USE file.
89:
90:
91: Release 7.3 28-Aug-07
92: ---------------------
93:
94: Most changes are bug fixes. Some that are not:
95:
96: 1. There is some support for Perl 5.10's experimental "backtracking control
97: verbs" such as (*PRUNE).
98:
99: 2. UTF-8 checking is now as per RFC 3629 instead of RFC 2279; this is more
100: restrictive in the strings it accepts.
101:
102: 3. Checking for potential integer overflow has been made more dynamic, and as a
103: consequence there is no longer a hard limit on the size of a subpattern that
104: has a limited repeat count.
105:
106: 4. When CRLF is a valid line-ending sequence, pcre_exec() and pcre_dfa_exec()
107: no longer advance by two characters instead of one when an unanchored match
108: fails at CRLF if there are explicit CR or LF matches within the pattern.
109: This gets rid of some anomalous effects that previously occurred.
110:
111: 5. Some PCRE-specific settings for varying the newline options at the start of
112: a pattern have been added.
113:
114:
115: Release 7.2 19-Jun-07
116: ---------------------
117:
118: WARNING: saved patterns that were compiled by earlier versions of PCRE must be
119: recompiled for use with 7.2 (necessitated by the addition of \K, \h, \H, \v,
120: and \V).
121:
122: Correction to the notes for 7.1: the note about shared libraries for Windows is
123: wrong. Previously, three libraries were built, but each could function
124: independently. For example, the pcreposix library also included all the
125: functions from the basic pcre library. The change is that the three libraries
126: are no longer independent. They are like the Unix libraries. To use the
127: pcreposix functions, for example, you need to link with both the pcreposix and
128: the basic pcre library.
129:
130: Some more features from Perl 5.10 have been added:
131:
132: (?-n) and (?+n) relative references for recursion and subroutines.
133:
134: (?(-n) and (?(+n) relative references as conditions.
135:
136: \k{name} and \g{name} are synonyms for \k<name>.
137:
138: \K to reset the start of the matched string; for example, (foo)\Kbar
139: matches bar preceded by foo, but only sets bar as the matched string.
140:
141: (?| introduces a group where the capturing parentheses in each alternative
142: start from the same number; for example, (?|(abc)|(xyz)) sets capturing
143: parentheses number 1 in both cases.
144:
145: \h, \H, \v, \V match horizontal and vertical whitespace, respectively.
146:
147:
148: Release 7.1 24-Apr-07
149: ---------------------
150:
151: There is only one new feature in this release: a linebreak setting of
152: PCRE_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF. It is a cut-down version of PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY, which
153: recognizes only CRLF, CR, and LF as linebreaks.
154:
155: A few bugs are fixed (see ChangeLog for details), but the major change is a
156: complete re-implementation of the build system. This now has full Autotools
157: support and so is now "standard" in some sense. It should help with compiling
158: PCRE in a wide variety of environments.
159:
160: NOTE: when building shared libraries for Windows, three dlls are now built,
161: called libpcre, libpcreposix, and libpcrecpp. Previously, everything was
162: included in a single dll.
163:
164: Another important change is that the dftables auxiliary program is no longer
165: compiled and run at "make" time by default. Instead, a default set of character
166: tables (assuming ASCII coding) is used. If you want to use dftables to generate
167: the character tables as previously, add --enable-rebuild-chartables to the
168: "configure" command. You must do this if you are compiling PCRE to run on a
169: system that uses EBCDIC code.
170:
171: There is a discussion about character tables in the README file. The default is
172: not to use dftables so that that there is no problem when cross-compiling.
173:
174:
175: Release 7.0 19-Dec-06
176: ---------------------
177:
178: This release has a new major number because there have been some internal
179: upheavals to facilitate the addition of new optimizations and other facilities,
180: and to make subsequent maintenance and extension easier. Compilation is likely
181: to be a bit slower, but there should be no major effect on runtime performance.
182: Previously compiled patterns are NOT upwards compatible with this release. If
183: you have saved compiled patterns from a previous release, you will have to
184: re-compile them. Important changes that are visible to users are:
185:
186: 1. The Unicode property tables have been updated to Unicode 5.0.0, which adds
187: some more scripts.
188:
189: 2. The option PCRE_NEWLINE_ANY causes PCRE to recognize any Unicode newline
190: sequence as a newline.
191:
192: 3. The \R escape matches a single Unicode newline sequence as a single unit.
193:
194: 4. New features that will appear in Perl 5.10 are now in PCRE. These include
195: alternative Perl syntax for named parentheses, and Perl syntax for
196: recursion.
197:
198: 5. The C++ wrapper interface has been extended by the addition of a
199: QuoteMeta function and the ability to allow copy construction and
200: assignment.
201:
202: For a complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file.
203:
204:
205: Release 6.7 04-Jul-06
206: ---------------------
207:
208: The main additions to this release are the ability to use the same name for
209: multiple sets of parentheses, and support for CRLF line endings in both the
210: library and pcregrep (and in pcretest for testing).
211:
212: Thanks to Ian Taylor, the stack usage for many kinds of pattern has been
213: significantly reduced for certain subject strings.
214:
215:
216: Release 6.5 01-Feb-06
217: ---------------------
218:
219: Important changes in this release:
220:
221: 1. A number of new features have been added to pcregrep.
222:
223: 2. The Unicode property tables have been updated to Unicode 4.1.0, and the
224: supported properties have been extended with script names such as "Arabic",
225: and the derived properties "Any" and "L&". This has necessitated a change to
226: the interal format of compiled patterns. Any saved compiled patterns that
227: use \p or \P must be recompiled.
228:
229: 3. The specification of recursion in patterns has been changed so that all
230: recursive subpatterns are automatically treated as atomic groups. Thus, for
231: example, (?R) is treated as if it were (?>(?R)). This is necessary because
232: otherwise there are situations where recursion does not work.
233:
234: See the ChangeLog for a complete list of changes, which include a number of bug
235: fixes and tidies.
236:
237:
238: Release 6.0 07-Jun-05
239: ---------------------
240:
241: The release number has been increased to 6.0 because of the addition of several
242: major new pieces of functionality.
243:
244: A new function, pcre_dfa_exec(), which implements pattern matching using a DFA
245: algorithm, has been added. This has a number of advantages for certain cases,
246: though it does run more slowly, and lacks the ability to capture substrings. On
247: the other hand, it does find all matches, not just the first, and it works
248: better for partial matching. The pcrematching man page discusses the
249: differences.
250:
251: The pcretest program has been enhanced so that it can make use of the new
252: pcre_dfa_exec() matching function and the extra features it provides.
253:
254: The distribution now includes a C++ wrapper library. This is built
255: automatically if a C++ compiler is found. The pcrecpp man page discusses this
256: interface.
257:
258: The code itself has been re-organized into many more files, one for each
259: function, so it no longer requires everything to be linked in when static
260: linkage is used. As a consequence, some internal functions have had to have
261: their names exposed. These functions all have names starting with _pcre_. They
262: are undocumented, and are not intended for use by outside callers.
263:
264: The pcregrep program has been enhanced with new functionality such as
265: multiline-matching and options for output more matching context. See the
266: ChangeLog for a complete list of changes to the library and the utility
267: programs.
268:
269:
270: Release 5.0 13-Sep-04
271: ---------------------
272:
273: The licence under which PCRE is released has been changed to the more
274: conventional "BSD" licence.
275:
276: In the code, some bugs have been fixed, and there are also some major changes
277: in this release (which is why I've increased the number to 5.0). Some changes
278: are internal rearrangements, and some provide a number of new facilities. The
279: new features are:
280:
281: 1. There's an "automatic callout" feature that inserts callouts before every
282: item in the regex, and there's a new callout field that gives the position
283: in the pattern - useful for debugging and tracing.
284:
285: 2. The extra_data structure can now be used to pass in a set of character
286: tables at exec time. This is useful if compiled regex are saved and re-used
287: at a later time when the tables may not be at the same address. If the
288: default internal tables are used, the pointer saved with the compiled
289: pattern is now set to NULL, which means that you don't need to do anything
290: special unless you are using custom tables.
291:
292: 3. It is possible, with some restrictions on the content of the regex, to
293: request "partial" matching. A special return code is given if all of the
294: subject string matched part of the regex. This could be useful for testing
295: an input field as it is being typed.
296:
297: 4. There is now some optional support for Unicode character properties, which
298: means that the patterns items such as \p{Lu} and \X can now be used. Only
299: the general category properties are supported. If PCRE is compiled with this
300: support, an additional 90K data structure is include, which increases the
301: size of the library dramatically.
302:
303: 5. There is support for saving compiled patterns and re-using them later.
304:
305: 6. There is support for running regular expressions that were compiled on a
306: different host with the opposite endianness.
307:
308: 7. The pcretest program has been extended to accommodate the new features.
309:
310: The main internal rearrangement is that sequences of literal characters are no
311: longer handled as strings. Instead, each character is handled on its own. This
312: makes some UTF-8 handling easier, and makes the support of partial matching
313: possible. Compiled patterns containing long literal strings will be larger as a
314: result of this change; I hope that performance will not be much affected.
315:
316:
317: Release 4.5 01-Dec-03
318: ---------------------
319:
320: Again mainly a bug-fix and tidying release, with only a couple of new features:
321:
322: 1. It's possible now to compile PCRE so that it does not use recursive
323: function calls when matching. Instead it gets memory from the heap. This slows
324: things down, but may be necessary on systems with limited stacks.
325:
326: 2. UTF-8 string checking has been tightened to reject overlong sequences and to
327: check that a starting offset points to the start of a character. Failure of the
328: latter returns a new error code: PCRE_ERROR_BADUTF8_OFFSET.
329:
330: 3. PCRE can now be compiled for systems that use EBCDIC code.
331:
332:
333: Release 4.4 21-Aug-03
334: ---------------------
335:
336: This is mainly a bug-fix and tidying release. The only new feature is that PCRE
337: checks UTF-8 strings for validity by default. There is an option to suppress
338: this, just in case anybody wants that teeny extra bit of performance.
339:
340:
341: Releases 4.1 - 4.3
342: ------------------
343:
344: Sorry, I forgot about updating the NEWS file for these releases. Please take a
345: look at ChangeLog.
346:
347:
348: Release 4.0 17-Feb-03
349: ---------------------
350:
351: There have been a lot of changes for the 4.0 release, adding additional
352: functionality and mending bugs. Below is a list of the highlights of the new
353: functionality. For full details of these features, please consult the
354: documentation. For a complete list of changes, see the ChangeLog file.
355:
356: 1. Support for Perl's \Q...\E escapes.
357:
358: 2. "Possessive quantifiers" ?+, *+, ++, and {,}+ which come from Sun's Java
359: package. They provide some syntactic sugar for simple cases of "atomic
360: grouping".
361:
362: 3. Support for the \G assertion. It is true when the current matching position
363: is at the start point of the match.
364:
365: 4. A new feature that provides some of the functionality that Perl provides
366: with (?{...}). The facility is termed a "callout". The way it is done in PCRE
367: is for the caller to provide an optional function, by setting pcre_callout to
368: its entry point. To get the function called, the regex must include (?C) at
369: appropriate points.
370:
371: 5. Support for recursive calls to individual subpatterns. This makes it really
372: easy to get totally confused.
373:
374: 6. Support for named subpatterns. The Python syntax (?P<name>...) is used to
375: name a group.
376:
377: 7. Several extensions to UTF-8 support; it is now fairly complete. There is an
378: option for pcregrep to make it operate in UTF-8 mode.
379:
380: 8. The single man page has been split into a number of separate man pages.
381: These also give rise to individual HTML pages which are put in a separate
382: directory. There is an index.html page that lists them all. Some hyperlinking
383: between the pages has been installed.
384:
385:
386: Release 3.5 15-Aug-01
387: ---------------------
388:
389: 1. The configuring system has been upgraded to use later versions of autoconf
390: and libtool. By default it builds both a shared and a static library if the OS
391: supports it. You can use --disable-shared or --disable-static on the configure
392: command if you want only one of them.
393:
394: 2. The pcretest utility is now installed along with pcregrep because it is
395: useful for users (to test regexs) and by doing this, it automatically gets
396: relinked by libtool. The documentation has been turned into a man page, so
397: there are now .1, .txt, and .html versions in /doc.
398:
399: 3. Upgrades to pcregrep:
400: (i) Added long-form option names like gnu grep.
401: (ii) Added --help to list all options with an explanatory phrase.
402: (iii) Added -r, --recursive to recurse into sub-directories.
403: (iv) Added -f, --file to read patterns from a file.
404:
405: 4. Added --enable-newline-is-cr and --enable-newline-is-lf to the configure
406: script, to force use of CR or LF instead of \n in the source. On non-Unix
407: systems, the value can be set in config.h.
408:
409: 5. The limit of 200 on non-capturing parentheses is a _nesting_ limit, not an
410: absolute limit. Changed the text of the error message to make this clear, and
411: likewise updated the man page.
412:
413: 6. The limit of 99 on the number of capturing subpatterns has been removed.
414: The new limit is 65535, which I hope will not be a "real" limit.
415:
416:
417: Release 3.3 01-Aug-00
418: ---------------------
419:
420: There is some support for UTF-8 character strings. This is incomplete and
421: experimental. The documentation describes what is and what is not implemented.
422: Otherwise, this is just a bug-fixing release.
423:
424:
425: Release 3.0 01-Feb-00
426: ---------------------
427:
428: 1. A "configure" script is now used to configure PCRE for Unix systems. It
429: builds a Makefile, a config.h file, and the pcre-config script.
430:
431: 2. PCRE is built as a shared library by default.
432:
433: 3. There is support for POSIX classes such as [:alpha:].
434:
435: 5. There is an experimental recursion feature.
436:
437: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
438: IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSIONS BEFORE 2.00
439:
440: Please note that there has been a change in the API such that a larger
441: ovector is required at matching time, to provide some additional workspace.
442: The new man page has details. This change was necessary in order to support
443: some of the new functionality in Perl 5.005.
444:
445: IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSION 2.00
446:
447: Another (I hope this is the last!) change has been made to the API for the
448: pcre_compile() function. An additional argument has been added to make it
449: possible to pass over a pointer to character tables built in the current
450: locale by pcre_maketables(). To use the default tables, this new arguement
451: should be passed as NULL.
452:
453: IMPORTANT FOR THOSE UPGRADING FROM VERSION 2.05
454:
455: Yet another (and again I hope this really is the last) change has been made
456: to the API for the pcre_exec() function. An additional argument has been
457: added to make it possible to start the match other than at the start of the
458: subject string. This is important if there are lookbehinds. The new man
459: page has the details, but you just want to convert existing programs, all
460: you need to do is to stick in a new fifth argument to pcre_exec(), with a
461: value of zero. For example, change
462:
463: pcre_exec(pattern, extra, subject, length, options, ovec, ovecsize)
464: to
465: pcre_exec(pattern, extra, subject, length, 0, options, ovec, ovecsize)
466:
467: ****
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