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NAME SYNOPSIS DESCRIPTION SEE ALSO
NAME
    re - Perl pragma to alter regular expression behaviour

SYNOPSIS
        use re 'taint';
        ($x) = ($^X =~ /^(.*)$/s);     # $x is tainted here

        $pat = '(?{ $foo = 1 })';
        use re 'eval';
        /foo${pat}bar/;                # won't fail (when not under -T
                                       # switch)

        {
            no re 'taint';             # the default
            ($x) = ($^X =~ /^(.*)$/s); # $x is not tainted here

            no re 'eval';              # the default
            /foo${pat}bar/;            # disallowed (with or without -T
                                       # switch)
        }

        use re 'strict';               # Raise warnings for more conditions

        use re '/ix';
        "FOO" =~ / foo /; # /ix implied
        no re '/x';
        "FOO" =~ /foo/; # just /i implied

        use re 'debug';                # output debugging info during
        /^(.*)$/s;                     # compile and run time


        use re 'debugcolor';           # same as 'debug', but with colored
                                       # output
        ...

        use re qw(Debug All);          # Same as "use re 'debug'", but you
                                       # can use "Debug" with things other
                                       # than 'All'
        use re qw(Debug More);         # 'All' plus output more details
        no re qw(Debug ALL);           # Turn on (almost) all re debugging
                                       # in this scope

        use re qw(is_regexp regexp_pattern); # import utility functions
        my ($pat,$mods)=regexp_pattern(qr/foo/i);
        if (is_regexp($obj)) {
            print "Got regexp: ",
                scalar regexp_pattern($obj); # just as perl would stringify
        }                                    # it but no hassle with blessed
                                             # re's.

    (We use $^X in these examples because it's tainted by default.)

DESCRIPTION
  'taint' mode
    When "use re 'taint'" is in effect, and a tainted string is the target
    of a regexp, the regexp memories (or values returned by the m// operator
    in list context) are tainted. This feature is useful when regexp
    operations on tainted data aren't meant to extract safe substrings, but
    to perform other transformations.

  'eval' mode
    When "use re 'eval'" is in effect, a regexp is allowed to contain "(?{
    ... })" zero-width assertions and "(??{ ... })" postponed subexpressions
    that are derived from variable interpolation, rather than appearing
    literally within the regexp. That is normally disallowed, since it is a
    potential security risk. Note that this pragma is ignored when the
    regular expression is obtained from tainted data, i.e. evaluation is
    always disallowed with tainted regular expressions. See "(?{ code })" in
    perlre and "(??{ code })" in perlre.

    For the purpose of this pragma, interpolation of precompiled regular
    expressions (i.e., the result of "qr//") is *not* considered variable
    interpolation. Thus:

        /foo${pat}bar/

    *is* allowed if $pat is a precompiled regular expression, even if $pat
    contains "(?{ ... })" assertions or "(??{ ... })" subexpressions.

  'strict' mode
    Note that this is an experimental feature which may be changed or
    removed in a future Perl release.

    When "use re 'strict'" is in effect, stricter checks are applied than
    otherwise when compiling regular expressions patterns. These may cause
    more warnings to be raised than otherwise, and more things to be fatal
    instead of just warnings. The purpose of this is to find and report at
    compile time some things, which may be legal, but have a reasonable
    possibility of not being the programmer's actual intent. This
    automatically turns on the "regexp" warnings category (if not already
    on) within its scope.

    As an example of something that is caught under ""strict'", but not
    otherwise, is the pattern

     qr/\xABC/

    The "\x" construct without curly braces should be followed by exactly
    two hex digits; this one is followed by three. This currently evaluates
    as equivalent to

     qr/\x{AB}C/

    that is, the character whose code point value is 0xAB, followed by the
    letter "C". But since "C" is a hex digit, there is a reasonable chance
    that the intent was

     qr/\x{ABC}/

    that is the single character at 0xABC. Under 'strict' it is an error to
    not follow "\x" with exactly two hex digits. When not under 'strict' a
    warning is generated if there is only one hex digit, and no warning is
    raised if there are more than two.

    It is expected that what exactly 'strict' does will evolve over time as
    we gain experience with it. This means that programs that compile under
    it in today's Perl may not compile, or may have more or fewer warnings,
    in future Perls. There is no backwards compatibility promises with
    regards to it. Also there are already proposals for an alternate syntax
    for enabling it. For these reasons, using it will raise a
    "experimental::re_strict" class warning, unless that category is turned
    off.

    Note that if a pattern compiled within 'strict' is recompiled, say by
    interpolating into another pattern, outside of 'strict', it is not
    checked again for strictness. This is because if it works under strict
    it must work under non-strict.

  '/flags' mode
    When "use re '/*flags*'" is specified, the given *flags* are
    automatically added to every regular expression till the end of the
    lexical scope. *flags* can be any combination of 'a', 'aa', 'd', 'i',
    'l', 'm', 'n', 'p', 's', 'u', 'x', and/or 'xx'.

    "no re '/*flags*'" will turn off the effect of "use re '/*flags*'" for
    the given flags.

    For example, if you want all your regular expressions to have /msxx on
    by default, simply put

        use re '/msxx';

    at the top of your code.

    The character set "/adul" flags cancel each other out. So, in this
    example,

        use re "/u";
        "ss" =~ /\xdf/;
        use re "/d";
        "ss" =~ /\xdf/;

    the second "use re" does an implicit "no re '/u'".

    Similarly,

        use re "/xx";   # Doubled-x
        ...
        use re "/x";    # Single x from here on
        ...

    Turning on one of the character set flags with "use re" takes precedence
    over the "locale" pragma and the 'unicode_strings' "feature", for
    regular expressions. Turning off one of these flags when it is active
    reverts to the behaviour specified by whatever other pragmata are in
    scope. For example:

        use feature "unicode_strings";
        no re "/u"; # does nothing
        use re "/l";
        no re "/l"; # reverts to unicode_strings behaviour

  'debug' mode
    When "use re 'debug'" is in effect, perl emits debugging messages when
    compiling and using regular expressions. The output is the same as that
    obtained by running a "-DDEBUGGING"-enabled perl interpreter with the
    -Dr switch. It may be quite voluminous depending on the complexity of
    the match. Using "debugcolor" instead of "debug" enables a form of
    output that can be used to get a colorful display on terminals that
    understand termcap color sequences. Set $ENV{PERL_RE_TC} to a
    comma-separated list of "termcap" properties to use for highlighting
    strings on/off, pre-point part on/off. See "Debugging Regular
    Expressions" in perldebug for additional info.

    As of 5.9.5 the directive "use re 'debug'" and its equivalents are
    lexically scoped, as the other directives are. However they have both
    compile-time and run-time effects.

    See "Pragmatic Modules" in perlmodlib.

  'Debug' mode
    Similarly "use re 'Debug'" produces debugging output, the difference
    being that it allows the fine tuning of what debugging output will be
    emitted. Options are divided into three groups, those related to
    compilation, those related to execution and those related to special
    purposes. The options are as follows:

    Compile related options

        COMPILE
            Turns on all non-extra compile related debug options.

        PARSE
            Turns on debug output related to the process of parsing the
            pattern.

        OPTIMISE
            Enables output related to the optimisation phase of compilation.

        TRIEC
            Detailed info about trie compilation.

        DUMP
            Dump the final program out after it is compiled and optimised.

        FLAGS
            Dump the flags associated with the program

        TEST
            Print output intended for testing the internals of the compile
            process

    Execute related options

        EXECUTE
            Turns on all non-extra execute related debug options.

        MATCH
            Turns on debugging of the main matching loop.

        TRIEE
            Extra debugging of how tries execute.

        INTUIT
            Enable debugging of start-point optimisations.

    Extra debugging options

        EXTRA
            Turns on all "extra" debugging options.

        BUFFERS
            Enable debugging the capture group storage during match.
            Warning, this can potentially produce extremely large output.

        TRIEM
            Enable enhanced TRIE debugging. Enhances both TRIEE and TRIEC.

        STATE
            Enable debugging of states in the engine.

        STACK
            Enable debugging of the recursion stack in the engine. Enabling
            or disabling this option automatically does the same for
            debugging states as well. This output from this can be quite
            large.

        GPOS
            Enable debugging of the \G modifier.

        OPTIMISEM
            Enable enhanced optimisation debugging and start-point
            optimisations. Probably not useful except when debugging the
            regexp engine itself.

        OFFSETS
            Dump offset information. This can be used to see how regops
            correlate to the pattern. Output format is

               NODENUM:POSITION[LENGTH]

            Where 1 is the position of the first char in the string. Note
            that position can be 0, or larger than the actual length of the
            pattern, likewise length can be zero.

        OFFSETSDBG
            Enable debugging of offsets information. This emits copious
            amounts of trace information and doesn't mesh well with other
            debug options.

            Almost definitely only useful to people hacking on the offsets
            part of the debug engine.

        DUMP_PRE_OPTIMIZE
            Enable the dumping of the compiled pattern before the
            optimization phase.

        WILDCARD
            When Perl encounters a wildcard subpattern, (see "Wildcards in
            Property Values" in perlunicode), it suspends compilation of the
            main pattern, compiles the subpattern, and then matches that
            against all legal possibilities to determine the actual code
            points the subpattern matches. After that it adds these to the
            main pattern, and continues its compilation.

            You may very well want to see how your subpattern gets compiled,
            but it is likely of less use to you to see how Perl matches that
            against all the legal possibilities, as that is under control of
            Perl, not you. Therefore, the debugging information of the
            compilation portion is as specified by the other options, but
            the debugging output of the matching portion is normally
            suppressed.

            You can use the WILDCARD option to enable the debugging output
            of this subpattern matching. Careful! This can lead to
            voluminous outputs, and it may not make much sense to you what
            and why Perl is doing what it is. But it may be helpful to you
            to see why things aren't going the way you expect.

            Note that this option alone doesn't cause any debugging
            information to be output. What it does is stop the normal
            suppression of execution-related debugging information during
            the matching portion of the compilation of wildcards. You also
            have to specify which execution debugging information you want,
            such as by also including the EXECUTE option.

    Other useful flags
        These are useful shortcuts to save on the typing.

        ALL Enable all options at once except OFFSETS, OFFSETSDBG, BUFFERS,
            WILDCARD, and DUMP_PRE_OPTIMIZE. (To get every single option
            without exception, use both ALL and EXTRA, or starting in 5.30
            on a "-DDEBUGGING"-enabled perl interpreter, use the -Drv
            command-line switches.)

        All Enable DUMP and all non-extra execute options. Equivalent to:

              use re 'debug';

        MORE
        More
            Enable the options enabled by "All", plus STATE, TRIEC, and
            TRIEM.

    As of 5.9.5 the directive "use re 'debug'" and its equivalents are
    lexically scoped, as are the other directives. However they have both
    compile-time and run-time effects.

  Exportable Functions
    As of perl 5.9.5 're' debug contains a number of utility functions that
    may be optionally exported into the caller's namespace. They are listed
    below.

    is_regexp($ref)
        Returns true if the argument is a compiled regular expression as
        returned by "qr//", false if it is not.

        This function will not be confused by overloading or blessing. In
        internals terms, this extracts the regexp pointer out of the
        PERL_MAGIC_qr structure so it cannot be fooled.

    regexp_pattern($ref)
        If the argument is a compiled regular expression as returned by
        "qr//", then this function returns the pattern.

        In list context it returns a two element list, the first element
        containing the pattern and the second containing the modifiers used
        when the pattern was compiled.

          my ($pat, $mods) = regexp_pattern($ref);

        In scalar context it returns the same as perl would when
        stringifying a raw "qr//" with the same pattern inside. If the
        argument is not a compiled reference then this routine returns false
        but defined in scalar context, and the empty list in list context.
        Thus the following

            if (regexp_pattern($ref) eq '(?^i:foo)')

        will be warning free regardless of what $ref actually is.

        Like "is_regexp" this function will not be confused by overloading
        or blessing of the object.

    regname($name,$all)
        Returns the contents of a named buffer of the last successful match.
        If $all is true, then returns an array ref containing one entry per
        buffer, otherwise returns the first defined buffer.

    regnames($all)
        Returns a list of all of the named buffers defined in the last
        successful match. If $all is true, then it returns all names
        defined, if not it returns only names which were involved in the
        match.

    regnames_count()
        Returns the number of distinct names defined in the pattern used for
        the last successful match.

        Note: this result is always the actual number of distinct named
        buffers defined, it may not actually match that which is returned by
        "regnames()" and related routines when those routines have not been
        called with the $all parameter set.

    regmust($ref)
        If the argument is a compiled regular expression as returned by
        "qr//", then this function returns what the optimiser considers to
        be the longest anchored fixed string and longest floating fixed
        string in the pattern.

        A *fixed string* is defined as being a substring that must appear
        for the pattern to match. An *anchored fixed string* is a fixed
        string that must appear at a particular offset from the beginning of
        the match. A *floating fixed string* is defined as a fixed string
        that can appear at any point in a range of positions relative to the
        start of the match. For example,

            my $qr = qr/here .* there/x;
            my ($anchored, $floating) = regmust($qr);
            print "anchored:'$anchored'\nfloating:'$floating'\n";

        results in

            anchored:'here'
            floating:'there'

        Because the "here" is before the ".*" in the pattern, its position
        can be determined exactly. That's not true, however, for the
        "there"; it could appear at any point after where the anchored
        string appeared. Perl uses both for its optimisations, preferring
        the longer, or, if they are equal, the floating.

        NOTE: This may not necessarily be the definitive longest anchored
        and floating string. This will be what the optimiser of the Perl
        that you are using thinks is the longest. If you believe that the
        result is wrong please report it via the perlbug utility.

    optimization($ref)
        If the argument is a compiled regular expression as returned by
        "qr//", then this function returns a hashref of the optimization
        information discovered at compile time, so we can write tests around
        it. If any other argument is given, returns "undef".

        The hash contents are expected to change from time to time as we
        develop new ways to optimize - no assumption of stability should be
        made, not even between minor versions of perl.

        For the current version, the hash will have the following contents:

        minlen
            An integer, the least number of characters in any string that
            can match.

        minlenret
            An integer, the least number of characters that can be in $&
            after a match. (Consider eg " /ns(?=\d)/ ".)

        gofs
            An integer, the number of characters before "pos()" to start
            match at.

        noscan
            A boolean, "TRUE" to indicate that any anchored/floating
            substrings found should not be used. (CHECKME: apparently this
            is set for an anchored pattern with no floating substring, but
            never used.)

        isall
            A boolean, "TRUE" to indicate that the optimizer information is
            all that the regular expression contains, and thus one does not
            need to enter the regexp runtime engine at all.

        anchor SBOL
            A boolean, "TRUE" if the pattern is anchored to start of string.

        anchor MBOL
            A boolean, "TRUE" if the pattern is anchored to any start of
            line within the string.

        anchor GPOS
            A boolean, "TRUE" if the pattern is anchored to the end of the
            previous match.

        skip
            A boolean, "TRUE" if the start class can match only the first of
            a run.

        implicit
            A boolean, "TRUE" if a "/.*/" has been turned implicitly into a
            "/^.*/".

        anchored/floating
            A byte string representing an anchored or floating substring
            respectively that any match must contain, or undef if no such
            substring was found, or if the substring would require utf8 to
            represent.

        anchored utf8/floating utf8
            A utf8 string representing an anchored or floating substring
            respectively that any match must contain, or undef if no such
            substring was found, or if the substring contains only 7-bit
            ASCII characters.

        anchored min offset/floating min offset
            An integer, the first offset in characters from a match location
            at which we should look for the corresponding substring.

        anchored max offset/floating max offset
            An integer, the last offset in characters from a match location
            at which we should look for the corresponding substring.

            Ignored for anchored, so may be 0 or same as min.

        anchored end shift/floating end shift
            FIXME: not sure what this is, something to do with lookbehind.
            regcomp.c says: When the final pattern is compiled and the data
            is moved from the scan_data_t structure into the regexp
            structure the information about lookbehind is factored in, with
            the information that would have been lost precalculated in the
            end_shift field for the associated string.

        checking
            A constant string, one of "anchored", "floating" or "none" to
            indicate which substring (if any) should be checked for first.

        stclass
            A string representation of a character class ("start class")
            that must be the first character of any match.

            TODO: explain the representations.

SEE ALSO
    "Pragmatic Modules" in perlmodlib.


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