pcre_get_named_substring(3)

pcre_get_named_substring3

Perl-compatible regular expressions

Usage

#include <pcre.h>

int pcre_get_named_substring(const pcre *code,
     const char *subject, int *ovector,
     int stringcount, const char *stringname,
     const char **stringptr);

int pcre16_get_named_substring(const pcre16 *code,
     PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int *ovector,
     int stringcount, PCRE_SPTR16 stringname,
     PCRE_SPTR16 *stringptr);

int pcre32_get_named_substring(const pcre32 *code,
     PCRE_SPTR32 subject, int *ovector,
     int stringcount, PCRE_SPTR32 stringname,
     PCRE_SPTR32 *stringptr);

Overview

This is a convenience function for extracting a captured substring by name. The arguments are:

code Compiled pattern
subject Subject that has been successfully matched
ovector Offset vector that pcre[16|32]_exec() used
stringcount Value returned by pcre[16|32]_exec()
stringname Name of the required substring
stringptr Where to put the string pointer

The memory in which the substring is placed is obtained by calling pcre[16|32]_malloc(). The convenience function pcre[16|32]_free_substring() can be used to free it when it is no longer needed. The yield of the function is the length of the extracted substring, PCRE_ERROR_NOMEMORY if sufficient memory could not be obtained, or PCRE_ERROR_NOSUBSTRING if the string name is invalid.

There is a complete description of the PCRE native API in the pcreapi page and a description of the POSIX API in the pcreposix page.

Releases

11 releases since Debian 3.1 (Sarge); the text changed 2 times.

  1. 3.1–6.0
  2. 7
  3. 8–Arch

From pcre 8.45-5 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.