Pattern Modifiers
The current possible PCRE modifiers are listed below. The names
in parentheses refer to internal PCRE names for these modifiers.
Spaces and newlines are ignored in modifiers, other characters cause error.
-
i (PCRE_CASELESS)
-
If this modifier is set, letters in the pattern match both
upper and lower case letters.
-
m (PCRE_MULTILINE)
-
By default, PCRE treats the subject string as consisting of a
single "line" of characters (even if it actually contains
several newlines). The "start of line" metacharacter (^)
matches only at the start of the string, while the "end of
line" metacharacter ($) matches only at the end of the
string, or before a terminating newline (unless
D modifier is set). This is the same as
Perl.
When this modifier is set, the "start of line" and "end of
line" constructs match immediately following or immediately
before any newline in the subject string, respectively, as
well as at the very start and end. This is equivalent to
Perl's /m modifier. If there are no "\n" characters in a
subject string, or no occurrences of ^ or $ in a pattern,
setting this modifier has no effect.
-
s (PCRE_DOTALL)
-
If this modifier is set, a dot metacharacter in the pattern
matches all characters, including newlines. Without it,
newlines are excluded. This modifier is equivalent to Perl's
/s modifier. A negative class such as [^a] always matches a
newline character, independent of the setting of this
modifier.
-
x (PCRE_EXTENDED)
-
If this modifier is set, whitespace data characters in the
pattern are totally ignored except when escaped or inside a
character class, and characters between an unescaped #
outside a character class and the next newline character,
inclusive, are also ignored. This is equivalent to Perl's /x
modifier, and makes it possible to include comments inside
complicated patterns. Note, however, that this applies only
to data characters. Whitespace characters may never appear
within special character sequences in a pattern, for example
within the sequence (?( which introduces a conditional
subpattern.
-
e (PREG_REPLACE_EVAL)
-
If this modifier is set, preg_replace()
does normal substitution of backreferences in the
replacement string, evaluates it as PHP code, and uses the
result for replacing the search string.
Single quotes, double quotes, backslashes and NULL chars will
be escaped by backslashes in substituted backreferences.
Only preg_replace() uses this modifier;
it is ignored by other PCRE functions.
-
A (PCRE_ANCHORED)
-
If this modifier is set, the pattern is forced to be
"anchored", that is, it is constrained to match only at the
start of the string which is being searched (the "subject
string"). This effect can also be achieved by appropriate
constructs in the pattern itself, which is the only way to
do it in Perl.
-
D (PCRE_DOLLAR_ENDONLY)
-
If this modifier is set, a dollar metacharacter in the pattern
matches only at the end of the subject string. Without this
modifier, a dollar also matches immediately before the final
character if it is a newline (but not before any other
newlines). This modifier is ignored if m
modifier is set. There is no equivalent to this modifier in
Perl.
-
S
-
When a pattern is going to be used several times, it is
worth spending more time analyzing it in order to speed up
the time taken for matching. If this modifier is set, then
this extra analysis is performed. At present, studying a
pattern is useful only for non-anchored patterns that do not
have a single fixed starting character.
-
U (PCRE_UNGREEDY)
-
This modifier inverts the "greediness" of the quantifiers so
that they are not greedy by default, but become greedy if
followed by "?". It is not compatible with Perl. It can also
be set by a (?U)
modifier setting within
the pattern or by a question mark behind a quantifier (e.g.
.*?).
-
X (PCRE_EXTRA)
-
This modifier turns on additional functionality of PCRE that
is incompatible with Perl. Any backslash in a pattern that
is followed by a letter that has no special meaning causes
an error, thus reserving these combinations for future
expansion. By default, as in Perl, a backslash followed by a
letter with no special meaning is treated as a literal.
There are at present no other features controlled by this
modifier.
-
J (PCRE_INFO_JCHANGED)
-
The (?J) internal option setting changes the local PCRE_DUPNAMES option.
Allow duplicate names for subpatterns.
-
u (PCRE_UTF8)
-
This modifier turns on additional functionality of PCRE that
is incompatible with Perl. Pattern strings are treated as
UTF-8. This modifier is available from PHP 4.1.0 or greater
on Unix and from PHP 4.2.3 on win32.
UTF-8 validity of the pattern is checked since PHP 4.3.5.
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