PCRE Documentation

[Adrian]

I wanted some fine details of the PCRE as supported by Notepad++ and quickly found
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/notepad-plus/index.php?title=Regular_Expressions
The page has the words "Complete documentation on the precise implementation is to be found the implementer's website" unfortunately the link into Boost reports:
"404 Not Found
File "/home/grafik/www.boost.org/archives/live/boost_1_49_0/libs/regex/doc/html/boost_regex/syntax/perl_syntax.html|on" not found.
Unable to find file."

I would like to know where the documentation can be found. Also, it would be nice if the Notepad++ page could be updated.

Thanks
Adrian

[THEVENOT Guy]

Hi, Adrian,

You can find good documentation, about the new PRCE Regular Expressions,
used by N++, since the 6.0 version, at the TWO addresses below :

http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_48_0/libs/regex/doc/html/boost_regex/syntax/perl_syntax.html

http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_48_0/libs/regex/doc/html/boost_regex/format/boost_format_syntax.html

The FIRST one concerns the syntax of regular expressions in SEARCH

The SECOND one concerns the syntax of regular expressions in REPLACEMENT

And, if you can understand "written French", I made a tutorial about
PCRE regular expressions, stored in the personal site of Christian Cuvier
(cchris), at the address below :

http://oedoc.free.fr/Regex/TutorielRegex.zip

But, don't panic ! The numerous lists, tables, examples and the standard S/R, at the
end of this tutorial, should not be too difficult to understand !

I intend to upgrade this tutorial, as soon as the 6.4 version of Notepad++ come out,
which should contain some fixes and improvements, concerning the PCRE engine of N++, especially about entities like lookbehinds or backwards assertions.

However, compared to the 6.0 version, which was the first version to use PCRE
regular expressions, just note that, in the actual 6.3.1 version of Notepad++ :

• The behaviour of the Replace button (step by step replacement) has been improved

• Bugs on management of empty lines have been fixed

• The use of Line Breaks with \r and/or \n are more coherent

• The display and the management of zero length regular expressions is quite possible

Many thanks to Dave Brotherstone and François-R Boyer for this major improvement !

I hope these explanations will be useful to you.

Cheers,

guy038

[Adrian]

Thank you very much Guy. A very informative answer.