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The PCRE2 library is a set of C functions that implement regular expressionpattern matching using the same syntax and semantics as Perl 5. PCRE2 has itsown native API, as well as a set of wrapper functions that correspond to thePOSIX regular expression API. The PCRE2 library is free, even for buildingproprietary software. It comes in three forms, for processing 8-bit, 16-bit,or 32-bit code units, in either literal or UTF encoding.

PCRE2 was first released in 2015 to replace the API in the original PCRElibrary, which is now obsolete and no longer maintained. As well as a moreflexible API, the code of PCRE2 has been much improved since the fork.

As well as downloading from theGitHub site, you can download PCRE2or the older, unmaintained PCRE1 library from anunofficial mirror at SourceForge.

You can check out the PCRE2 source code via Git or Subversion:

git clone https://github.com/PCRE2Project/pcre2.gitsvn co    https://github.com/PCRE2Project/pcre2.git

If you just need the command-line PCRE2 tools on Windows, precompiled binaryversions are available at thisRexegg page.

A PCRE2 port for z/OS, a mainframe operating system which uses EBCDIC as itsdefault character encoding, can be found athttp://www.cbttape.org (File 939).

You can read the PCRE2 documentationhere.

Comparisons to Perl's regular expression semantics can be found in thecommunity authored Wikipedia entry for PCRE.

There is a curated summary of changes for each PCRE release, copies ofdocumentation from older releases, and other useful information from the thirdparty authoredRexEgg PCRE Documentation and Change Log page.

To report a problem with the PCRE2 library, or to make a feature request, pleaseuse the PCRE2 GitHub issues tracker. There is a mailing list for discussion ofPCRE2 issues and development atpcre2-dev@googlegroups.com, which is where anyannouncements will be made. You can browse thelist archives.