PCRE Module and C Library

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∟PCRE Module - Perl Compatible Regular Expressions

∟PCRE Module and C Library

This section provides a quick introduction on PCRE Library for regular expression operations.

What Is PCRE Module? - PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions) Module, also called PCRE Extension or PCRE Library, provides a set of functions that implement regular expression pattern matching using the same syntax and semantics as Perl 5. PCRE module was introduced in PHP 4 and based on the PCRE C library written by Philip Hazel.

PCRE module is automatically included in PHP distribution packages.

Main functions provided by the PCRE module:

$found = preg_match($pattern, $subject, $matches, $flags) - Perform a regular expression match.
$found = preg_match_all($pattern, $subject, $matches, $flags) - Perform a global regular expression match.
$matches = preg_grep($pattern, subjects) - Return matched subjects.
$outputs = preg_replace($patterns, $replacements, $subjects) - Perform a regular expression search and replace, and return all subjects, affected and unaffected.
$replaced = preg_filter($patterns, $replacements, $subjects) - Perform a regular expression search and replace, and return affected subjects.
$tokens = preg_split($pattern, $subject) - Split string by a regular expression.
$quoted = preg_quote($pattern, $delimiter) - Quote regular expression characters and a given delimiter.
$error - preg_last_error_msg() - Retrieve the last PCRE operation error.