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