pcre_refcount(3)

pcre_refcount3

Perl-compatible regular expressions

Usage

#include <pcre.h>

int pcre_refcount(pcre *code, int adjust);

int pcre16_refcount(pcre16 *code, int adjust);

int pcre32_refcount(pcre32 *code, int adjust);

Overview

This function is used to maintain a reference count inside a data block that contains a compiled pattern. Its arguments are:

code Compiled regular expression
adjust Adjustment to reference value

The yield of the function is the adjusted reference value, which is constrained to lie between 0 and 65535.

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.