Memory-managed wrapper type.

Checks whether replacement is a valid replacement string (see regexReplace), i.e. that all escape sequences in it are valid.

If hasReferences is not Nothing then replacement is checked for pattern references. For instance, replacement text 'foo\n' does not contain references and may be evaluated without information about actual match, but '\0\1' (whole match followed by first subpattern) requires valid MatchInfo object.

Since: 2.14

No description available in the introspection data.

Escapes the nul characters in string to "\x00". It can be used to compile a regex with embedded nul characters.

For completeness, length can be -1 for a nul-terminated string. In this case the output string will be of course equal to string.

Since: 2.30

Escapes the special characters used for regular expressions in string, for instance "a.b*c" becomes "a\.b\*c". This function is useful to dynamically generate regular expressions.

string can contain nul characters that are replaced with "\0", in this case remember to specify the correct length of string in length.

Since: 2.14

Returns the number of capturing subpatterns in the pattern.

Since: 2.14

Returns the compile options that regex was created with.

Depending on the version of PCRE that is used, this may or may not include flags set by option expressions such as (?i) found at the top-level within the compiled pattern.

Since: 2.26

Checks whether the pattern contains explicit CR or LF references.

Since: 2.34

Returns the match options that regex was created with.

Since: 2.26

Returns the number of the highest back reference in the pattern, or 0 if the pattern does not contain back references.

Since: 2.14

Gets the number of characters in the longest lookbehind assertion in the pattern. This information is useful when doing multi-segment matching using the partial matching facilities.

Since: 2.38

Gets the pattern string associated with regex, i.e. a copy of the string passed to regexNew.

Since: 2.14

Retrieves the number of the subexpression named name.

Since: 2.14

Scans for a match in string for the pattern in regex. The matchOptions are combined with the match options specified when the regex structure was created, letting you have more flexibility in reusing Regex structures.

Unless RegexCompileFlagsRaw is specified in the options, string must be valid UTF-8.

A MatchInfo structure, used to get information on the match, is stored in matchInfo if not Nothing. Note that if matchInfo is not Nothing then it is created even if the function returns False, i.e. you must free it regardless if regular expression actually matched.

To retrieve all the non-overlapping matches of the pattern in string you can use matchInfoNext.

C code

static void
print_uppercase_words (const gchar *string)
{
  // Print all uppercase-only words.
  GRegex *regex;
  GMatchInfo *match_info;
 
  regex = g_regex_new ("[A-Z]+", 0, 0, NULL);
  g_regex_match (regex, string, 0, &match_info);
  while (g_match_info_matches (match_info))
    {
      gchar *word = g_match_info_fetch (match_info, 0);
      g_print ("Found: %s\n", word);
      g_free (word);
      g_match_info_next (match_info, NULL);
    }
  g_match_info_free (match_info);
  g_regex_unref (regex);
}

string is not copied and is used in MatchInfo internally. If you use any MatchInfo method (except matchInfoFree) after freeing or modifying string then the behaviour is undefined.

Since: 2.14

Using the standard algorithm for regular expression matching only the longest match in the string is retrieved. This function uses a different algorithm so it can retrieve all the possible matches. For more documentation see regexMatchAllFull.

A MatchInfo structure, used to get information on the match, is stored in matchInfo if not Nothing. Note that if matchInfo is not Nothing then it is created even if the function returns False, i.e. you must free it regardless if regular expression actually matched.

string is not copied and is used in MatchInfo internally. If you use any MatchInfo method (except matchInfoFree) after freeing or modifying string then the behaviour is undefined.

Since: 2.14

Using the standard algorithm for regular expression matching only the longest match in the string is retrieved, it is not possible to obtain all the available matches. For instance matching "<a> <b> <c>" against the pattern "<.*>" you get "<a> <b> <c>".

This function uses a different algorithm (called DFA, i.e. deterministic finite automaton), so it can retrieve all the possible matches, all starting at the same point in the string. For instance matching "<a> <b> <c>" against the pattern "<.*>;" you would obtain three matches: "<a> <b> <c>", "<a> <b>" and "<a>".

The number of matched strings is retrieved using matchInfoGetMatchCount. To obtain the matched strings and their position you can use, respectively, matchInfoFetch and matchInfoFetchPos. Note that the strings are returned in reverse order of length; that is, the longest matching string is given first.

Note that the DFA algorithm is slower than the standard one and it is not able to capture substrings, so backreferences do not work.

Setting startPosition differs from just passing over a shortened string and setting G_REGEX_MATCH_NOTBOL in the case of a pattern that begins with any kind of lookbehind assertion, such as "\b".

Unless RegexCompileFlagsRaw is specified in the options, string must be valid UTF-8.

A MatchInfo structure, used to get information on the match, is stored in matchInfo if not Nothing. Note that if matchInfo is not Nothing then it is created even if the function returns False, i.e. you must free it regardless if regular expression actually matched.

string is not copied and is used in MatchInfo internally. If you use any MatchInfo method (except matchInfoFree) after freeing or modifying string then the behaviour is undefined.

Since: 2.14

Scans for a match in string for the pattern in regex. The matchOptions are combined with the match options specified when the regex structure was created, letting you have more flexibility in reusing Regex structures.

Setting startPosition differs from just passing over a shortened string and setting G_REGEX_MATCH_NOTBOL in the case of a pattern that begins with any kind of lookbehind assertion, such as "\b".

Unless RegexCompileFlagsRaw is specified in the options, string must be valid UTF-8.

A MatchInfo structure, used to get information on the match, is stored in matchInfo if not Nothing. Note that if matchInfo is not Nothing then it is created even if the function returns False, i.e. you must free it regardless if regular expression actually matched.

string is not copied and is used in MatchInfo internally. If you use any MatchInfo method (except matchInfoFree) after freeing or modifying string then the behaviour is undefined.

To retrieve all the non-overlapping matches of the pattern in string you can use matchInfoNext.

C code

static void
print_uppercase_words (const gchar *string)
{
  // Print all uppercase-only words.
  GRegex *regex;
  GMatchInfo *match_info;
  GError *error = NULL;
  
  regex = g_regex_new ("[A-Z]+", 0, 0, NULL);
  g_regex_match_full (regex, string, -1, 0, 0, &match_info, &error);
  while (g_match_info_matches (match_info))
    {
      gchar *word = g_match_info_fetch (match_info, 0);
      g_print ("Found: %s\n", word);
      g_free (word);
      g_match_info_next (match_info, &error);
    }
  g_match_info_free (match_info);
  g_regex_unref (regex);
  if (error != NULL)
    {
      g_printerr ("Error while matching: %s\n", error->message);
      g_error_free (error);
    }
}

Since: 2.14

Scans for a match in string for pattern.

This function is equivalent to regexMatch but it does not require to compile the pattern with regexNew, avoiding some lines of code when you need just to do a match without extracting substrings, capture counts, and so on.

If this function is to be called on the same pattern more than once, it's more efficient to compile the pattern once with regexNew and then use regexMatch.

Since: 2.14

Compiles the regular expression to an internal form, and does the initial setup of the Regex structure.

Since: 2.14

Increases reference count of regex by 1.

Since: 2.14

Replaces all occurrences of the pattern in regex with the replacement text. Backreferences of the form '\number' or '\g<number>' in the replacement text are interpolated by the number-th captured subexpression of the match, '\g<name>' refers to the captured subexpression with the given name. '\0' refers to the complete match, but '\0' followed by a number is the octal representation of a character. To include a literal '\' in the replacement, write '\\'.

There are also escapes that changes the case of the following text:

• \l: Convert to lower case the next character
• \u: Convert to upper case the next character
• \L: Convert to lower case till \E
• \U: Convert to upper case till \E
• \E: End case modification

If you do not need to use backreferences use regexReplaceLiteral.

The replacement string must be UTF-8 encoded even if G_REGEX_RAW was passed to regexNew. If you want to use not UTF-8 encoded stings you can use regexReplaceLiteral.

Setting startPosition differs from just passing over a shortened string and setting G_REGEX_MATCH_NOTBOL in the case of a pattern that begins with any kind of lookbehind assertion, such as "\b".

Since: 2.14

Replaces all occurrences of the pattern in regex with the replacement text. replacement is replaced literally, to include backreferences use regexReplace.

Setting startPosition differs from just passing over a shortened string and setting G_REGEX_MATCH_NOTBOL in the case of a pattern that begins with any kind of lookbehind assertion, such as "\b".

Since: 2.14

Breaks the string on the pattern, and returns an array of the tokens. If the pattern contains capturing parentheses, then the text for each of the substrings will also be returned. If the pattern does not match anywhere in the string, then the whole string is returned as the first token.

As a special case, the result of splitting the empty string "" is an empty vector, not a vector containing a single string. The reason for this special case is that being able to represent an empty vector is typically more useful than consistent handling of empty elements. If you do need to represent empty elements, you'll need to check for the empty string before calling this function.

A pattern that can match empty strings splits string into separate characters wherever it matches the empty string between characters. For example splitting "ab c" using as a separator "\s*", you will get "a", "b" and "c".

Since: 2.14

Breaks the string on the pattern, and returns an array of the tokens. If the pattern contains capturing parentheses, then the text for each of the substrings will also be returned. If the pattern does not match anywhere in the string, then the whole string is returned as the first token.

As a special case, the result of splitting the empty string "" is an empty vector, not a vector containing a single string. The reason for this special case is that being able to represent an empty vector is typically more useful than consistent handling of empty elements. If you do need to represent empty elements, you'll need to check for the empty string before calling this function.

A pattern that can match empty strings splits string into separate characters wherever it matches the empty string between characters. For example splitting "ab c" using as a separator "\s*", you will get "a", "b" and "c".

Setting startPosition differs from just passing over a shortened string and setting G_REGEX_MATCH_NOTBOL in the case of a pattern that begins with any kind of lookbehind assertion, such as "\b".

Since: 2.14

Breaks the string on the pattern, and returns an array of the tokens. If the pattern contains capturing parentheses, then the text for each of the substrings will also be returned. If the pattern does not match anywhere in the string, then the whole string is returned as the first token.

This function is equivalent to regexSplit but it does not require to compile the pattern with regexNew, avoiding some lines of code when you need just to do a split without extracting substrings, capture counts, and so on.

If this function is to be called on the same pattern more than once, it's more efficient to compile the pattern once with regexNew and then use regexSplit.

As a special case, the result of splitting the empty string "" is an empty vector, not a vector containing a single string. The reason for this special case is that being able to represent an empty vector is typically more useful than consistent handling of empty elements. If you do need to represent empty elements, you'll need to check for the empty string before calling this function.

A pattern that can match empty strings splits string into separate characters wherever it matches the empty string between characters. For example splitting "ab c" using as a separator "\s*", you will get "a", "b" and "c".

Since: 2.14

Decreases reference count of regex by 1. When reference count drops to zero, it frees all the memory associated with the regex structure.

Since: 2.14