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PCRE_GET_SUBSTRING

Section: C Library Functions (3)
Updated: 24 June 2012
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NAME

PCRE - Perl-compatible regular expressions

SYNOPSIS

#include <pcre.h>

int pcre_get_substring(const char *subject, int *ovector,
     int stringcount, int stringnumber,
     const char **stringptr);

int pcre16_get_substring(PCRE_SPTR16 subject, int *ovector,
     int stringcount, int stringnumber,
     PCRE_SPTR16 *stringptr);

int pcre32_get_substring(PCRE_SPTR32 subject, int *ovector,
     int stringcount, int stringnumber,
     PCRE_SPTR32 *stringptr);

DESCRIPTION

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

  subject       Subject that has been successfully matched
  ovector       Offset vector that pcre[16|32]_exec() used
  stringcount   Value returned by pcre[16|32]_exec()
  stringnumber  Number 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 substring, PCRE_ERROR_NOMEMORY if sufficient memory could not be obtained, or PCRE_ERROR_NOSUBSTRING if the string number 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.