MAINTENANCE README FOR PCRE2 ============================ The files in the "maint" directory of the PCRE2 source contain data, scripts, and programs that are used for the maintenance of PCRE2, but which do not form part of the PCRE2 distribution tarballs. This document describes these files and also contains some notes for maintainers. Its contents are: Files in the maint directory Updating to a new Unicode release Preparing for a PCRE2 release Making a PCRE2 release Long-term ideas (wish list) Files in the maint directory ============================ GenerateCommon.py A Python module containing data and functions that are used by the other Generate scripts. GenerateTest26.py A Python script that generates input and expected output test data for test 26, which tests certain aspects of Unicode property support. GenerateUcd.py A Python script that generates the file pcre2_ucd.c from GenerateCommon.py and Unicode data files, which are themselves downloaded from the Unicode web site. The generated file contains the tables for a 2-stage lookup of Unicode properties, along with some auxiliary tables. The script starts with a long comment that gives details of the tables it constructs. GenerateUcpHeader.py A Python script that generates the file pcre2_ucp.h from GenerateCommon.py and Unicode data files. The generated file defines constants for various Unicode property values. GenerateUcpTables.py A Python script that generates the file pcre2_ucptables.c from GenerateCommon.py and Unicode data files. The generated file contains tables for looking up Unicode property names. ManyConfigTests A shell script that runs "configure, make, test" a number of times with different configuration settings. pcre2_chartables.c.non-standard This is a set of character tables that came from a Windows system. It has characters greater than 128 that are set as spaces, amongst other things. I kept it so that it can be used for testing from time to time. README This file. Unicode.tables The files in this directory were downloaded from the Unicode web site. They contain information about Unicode characters and scripts, and are used by the Generate scripts. There is also UnicodeData.txt, which is no longer used by any script, because it is useful occasionally for manually looking up the details of certain characters. However, note that character names in this file such as "Arabic sign sanah" do NOT mean that the character is in a particular script (in this case, Arabic). Scripts.txt and ScriptExtensions.txt are where to look for script information. ucptest.c A program for testing the Unicode property macros that do lookups in the pcre2_ucd.c data, mainly useful after rebuilding the Unicode property tables. Compile and run this in the "maint" directory (see comments at its head). This program can also be used to find characters with specific properties and to list which properties are supported. ucptestdata A directory containing four files, testinput{1,2} and testoutput{1,2}, for use in conjunction with the ucptest program. utf8.c A short, freestanding C program for converting a Unicode code point into a sequence of bytes in the UTF-8 encoding, and vice versa. If its argument is a hex number such as 0x1234, it outputs a list of the equivalent UTF-8 bytes. If its argument is a sequence of concatenated UTF-8 bytes (e.g. 12e188b4) it treats them as a UTF-8 string and outputs the equivalent code points in hex. See comments at its head for details. Updating to a new Unicode release ================================= When there is a new release of Unicode, the files in Unicode.tables must be refreshed from the web site. Once that is done, the four Python scripts that generate files from the Unicode data can be run from within the "maint" directory. Note: Previously, it was necessary to update lists of scripts and their abbreviations by hand before running the Python scripts. This is no longer necessary because the scripts have been upgraded to extract this information themselves. Also, there used to be explicit lists of scripts in two of the man pages. This is no longer the case; the pcre2test program can now output a list of supported scripts. You can give an output file name as an argument to the following scripts, but by default: GenerateUcd.py creates pcre2_ucd.c ) GenerateUcpHeader.py creates pcre2_ucp.h ) in the current directory GenerateUcpTables.py creates pcre2_ucptables.c ) These files can be compared against the existing versions in the src directory to check on any changes before replacing the old files, but you can also generate directly into the final location by running: ./GenerateUcd.py ../src/pcre2_ucd.c ./GenerateUcpHeader.py ../src/pcre2_ucp.h ./GenerateUcpTables.py ../src/pcre2_ucptables.c Once the .c and .h files are in the ../src directory, the ucptest program can be compiled and used to check that the new tables work properly. The data files in ucptestdata are set up to check a number of test characters. See the comments at the start of ucptest.c. If there are new scripts, adding a few tests to the files in ucptestdata is a good idea. Finally, you should run the GenerateTest26.py script to regenerate new versions of the input and expected output from a series of Unicode property tests that are automatically generated from the Unicode data files. By default, the files are written to testinput26 and testoutput26 in the current directory, but you can give an alternative directory name as an argument to the script. These files should eventually be installed in the main testdata directory. Preparing for a PCRE2 release ============================= This section contains a checklist of things that I do before building a new release. . Ensure that the version number and version date are correct in configure.ac. . Update the library version numbers in configure.ac according to the rules given below. . If new build options or new source files have been added, ensure that they are added to the CMake files as well as to the autoconf files. The relevant files are CMakeLists.txt and config-cmake.h.in. After making a release, test it out with CMake if there have been changes here. . Run ./autogen.sh to ensure everything is up-to-date. . Compile and test with many different config options, and combinations of options. Also, test with valgrind by running "RunTest valgrind" and "RunGrepTest valgrind". The script maint/ManyConfigTests now encapsulates this testing. It runs tests with different configurations, and it also runs some of them with valgrind, all of which can take quite some time. . Run tests in both 32-bit and 64-bit environments if possible. I can no longer run 32-bit tests. . Run tests with two or more different compilers (e.g. clang and gcc), and make use of -fsanitize=address and friends where possible. For gcc, -fsanitize=undefined -std=gnu99 picks up undefined behaviour at runtime, but needs -fno-sanitize=shift to get rid of warnings for shifts of negative numbers in the JIT compiler. For clang, -fsanitize=address,undefined,integer can be used but -fno-sanitize=alignment,shift,unsigned-integer-overflow must be added when compiling with JIT. Another useful clang option is -fsanitize=signed-integer-overflow . Do a test build using CMake. Remove src/config.h first, lest it override the version that CMake creates. Also do a CMake unity build to check that it still works: [c]cmake -DCMAKE_UNITY_BUILD=ON sets up a unity build. . Run perltest.sh on the test data for tests 1 and 4. The output should match the PCRE2 test output, apart from the version identification at the start of each test. Sometimes there are other differences in test 4 if PCRE2 and Perl are using different Unicode releases. The other tests are not Perl-compatible (they use various PCRE2-specific features or options). . It is possible to test with the emulated memmove() function by undefining HAVE_MEMMOVE and HAVE_BCOPY in config.h, though I do not do this often. . Documentation: check AUTHORS, ChangeLog (check version and date), LICENCE, NEWS (check version and date), NON-AUTOTOOLS-BUILD, and README. Many of these won't need changing, but over the long term things do change. . I used to test new releases myself on a number of different operating systems. For example, on Solaris it is helpful to test using Sun's cc compiler as a change from gcc. Adding -xarch=v9 to the cc options does a 64-bit test, but it also needs -S 64 for pcre2test to increase the stack size for test 2. Since I retired I can no longer do much of this. There are automated tests under Ubuntu, Alpine, and Windows that are now set up as GitHub actions. Check that they are running clean. . The buildbots at http://buildfarm.opencsw.org/ do some automated testing of PCRE2 and should also be checked before putting out a release. Updating version info for libtool ================================= This set of rules for updating library version information came from a web page whose URL I have forgotten. The version information consists of three parts: (current, revision, age). 1. Start with version information of 0:0:0 for each libtool library. 2. Update the version information only immediately before a public release of your software. More frequent updates are unnecessary, and only guarantee that the current interface number gets larger faster. 3. If the library source code has changed at all since the last update, then increment revision; c:r:a becomes c:r+1:a. 4. If any interfaces have been added, removed, or changed since the last update, increment current, and set revision to 0. 5. If any interfaces have been added since the last public release, then increment age. 6. If any interfaces have been removed or changed since the last public release, then set age to 0. The following explanation may help in understanding the above rules a bit better. Consider that there are three possible kinds of reaction from users to changes in a shared library: 1. Programs using the previous version may use the new version as a drop-in replacement, and programs using the new version can also work with the previous one. In other words, no recompiling nor relinking is needed. In this case, increment revision only, don't touch current or age. 2. Programs using the previous version may use the new version as a drop-in replacement, but programs using the new version may use APIs not present in the previous one. In other words, a program linking against the new version may fail if linked against the old version at run time. In this case, set revision to 0, increment current and age. 3. Programs may need to be changed, recompiled, relinked in order to use the new version. Increment current, set revision and age to 0. Making a PCRE2 release ====================== Run PrepareRelease and commit the files that it changes. The first thing this script does is to run CheckMan on the man pages; if it finds any markup errors, it reports them and then aborts. Otherwise it removes trailing spaces from sources and refreshes the HTML documentation. Update the GitHub repository with "git push". Once PrepareRelease has run clean, run "make distcheck" to create the tarballs and the zipball. I then sign these files. Double-check with "git status" that the repository is fully up-to-date, then create a new tag and a release on GitHub. Upload the tarballs, zipball, and the signatures as "assets" of the GitHub release. When the new release is out, don't forget to tell webmaster@pcre.org and the mailing list. Future ideas (wish list) ======================== This section records a list of ideas so that they do not get forgotten. They vary enormously in their usefulness and potential for implementation. Some are very sensible; some are rather wacky. Some have been on this list for many years. . Optimization There are always ideas for new optimizations so as to speed up pattern matching. Most of them try to save work by recognizing a non-match without having to scan all the possibilities. These are some that I've recorded: * /((A{0,5}){0,5}){0,5}(something complex)/ on a non-matching string is very slow, though Perl is fast. Can we speed up somehow? Convert to {0,125}? OTOH, this is pathological - the user could easily fix it. * Turn ={4} into ==== ? (for speed). I once did an experiment, and it seems to have little effect, and maybe makes things worse. * "Ends with literal string" - note that a single character doesn't gain much over the existing "required code unit" feature that just remembers one code unit. * Remember an initial string rather than just 1 code unit. * A required code unit from alternatives - not just the last unit, but an earlier one if common to all alternatives. * Friedl contains other ideas. * The code does not set initial code unit flags for Unicode property types such as \p; I don't know how much benefit there would be for, for example, setting the bits for 0-9 and all values >= xC0 (in 8-bit mode) when a pattern starts with \p{N}. . If Perl gets to a consistent state over the settings of capturing sub- patterns inside repeats, see if we can match it. One example of the difference is the matching of /(main(O)?)+/ against mainOmain, where PCRE2 leaves $2 set. In Perl, it's unset. Changing this in PCRE2 will be very hard because I think it needs much more state to be remembered. . A feature to suspend a match via a callout was once requested. . An option to convert results into character offsets and character lengths. . A (non-Unix) user wanted pcregrep options to (a) list a file name just once, preceded by a blank line, instead of adding it to every matched line, and (b) support --outputfile=name. . Define a union for the results from pcre2_pattern_info(). . Provide a "random access to the subject" facility so that the way in which it is stored is independent of PCRE2. For efficiency, it probably isn't possible to switch this dynamically. It would have to be specified when PCRE2 was compiled. PCRE2 would then call a function every time it wanted a character. . pcre2grep: add -rs for a sorted recurse. Having to store file names and sort them will of course slow it down. . Someone suggested --disable-callout to save code space when callouts are never wanted. This seems rather marginal. . A user suggested a parameter to limit the length of string matched, for example if the parameter is N, the current match should fail if the matched substring exceeds N. This could apply to both match functions. The value could be a new field in the match context. Compare the offset_limit feature, which limits where a match must start. . Write a function that generates random matching strings for a compiled pattern. . Pcre2grep: an option to specify the output line separator, either as a string or select from a fixed list. This is not straightforward, because at the moment it outputs whatever is in the input file. . Improve the code for duplicate checking in pcre2_dfa_match(). An incomplete, non-thread-safe patch showed that this can help performance for patterns where there are many alternatives. However, a simple thread-safe implementation that I tried made things worse in many simple cases, so this is not an obviously good thing. . PCRE2 cannot at present distinguish between subpatterns with different names, but the same number (created by the use of ?|). In order to do so, a way of remembering *which* subpattern numbered n matched is needed. (*MARK) can perhaps be used as a way round this problem. However, note that Perl does not distinguish: like PCRE2, a name is just an alias for a number in Perl. . Instead of having #ifdef HAVE_CONFIG_H in each module, put #include "something" and the the #ifdef appears only in one place, in "something". . Implement something like (?(R2+)... to check outer recursions. . If Perl ever supports the POSIX notation [[.something.]] PCRE2 should try to follow. . A user wanted a way of ignoring all Unicode "mark" characters so that, for example "a" followed by an accent would, together, match "a". This can only be done clumsily at present by using a lookahead such as /(?=a)\X/, which works for "combining" characters. . Perl supports [\N{x}-\N{y}] as a Unicode range, even in EBCDIC. PCRE2 supports \N{U+dd..} everywhere, but not in EBCDIC. . Unicode stuff from Perl: \b{gcb} or \b{g} grapheme cluster boundary \b{sb} sentence boundary \b{wb} word boundary See Unicode TR 29. The last two are very much aimed at natural language. . Allow a callout to specify a number of characters to skip. This can be done compatibly via an extra callout field. . Allow callouts to return *PRUNE, *COMMIT, *THEN, *SKIP, with and without continuing (that is, with and without an implied *FAIL). A new option, PCRE2_CALLOUT_EXTENDED say, would be needed. This is unlikely ever to be implemented by JIT, so this could be an option for pcre2_match(). . A limit on substitutions: a user suggested somehow finding a way of making match_limit apply to the whole operation instead of each match separately. . Some #defines could be replaced with enums to improve robustness. . There was a request for an option for pcre2_match() to return the longest match. This would mean searching for all possible matches, of course. . Perl's /a modifier sets Unicode, but restricts \d etc to ASCII characters, which is the PCRE2 default for PCRE2_UTF (use PCRE2_UCP to change). However, Perl also has /aa, which in addition, disables ASCII/non-ASCII caseless matching. Perhaps we need a new option PCRE2_CASELESS_RESTRICT_ASCII. In practice, this just means not using the ucd_caseless_sets[] table. . There is more that could be done to the oss-fuzz setup (needs some research). A seed corpus could be built. I noted something about $LIB_FUZZING_ENGINE. The test function could make use of get_substrings() to cover more code. . A neater way of handling recursion file names in pcre2grep, e.g. a single buffer that can grow. See also GitHub issue #2 (recursion looping via symlinks). . A user suggested that before/after parameters in pcre2grep could have negative values, to list lines near to the matched line, but not necessarily the line itself. For example, --before-context=-1 would list the line *after* each matched line, without showing the matched line. The problem here is what to do with matches that are close together. Maybe a simpler way would be a flag to disable showing matched lines, only valid with either -A or -B? . There was a suggestiong for a pcre2grep colour default, or possibly a more general PCRE2GREP_OPT, but only for some options - not file names or patterns. . Breaking loops that match an empty string: perhaps find a way of continuing if *something* has changed, but this might mean remembering additional data. "Something" could be a capture value, but then a list of previous values would be needed to avoid a cycle of changes. . If a function could be written to find 3-character (or other length) fixed strings, at least one of which must be present for a match, efficient pre-searching of large datasets could be implemented. . If pcre2grep had --first-line (match only in the first line) it could be efficiently used to find files "starting with xxx". What about --last-line? There was also the suggestion of an option for pcre2grep to scan only the start of a file. I am not keen - this is the job of "head". . A user requested a means of determining whether a failed match was failed by the start-of-match optimizations, or by running the match engine. Easy enough to define a bit in the match data, but all three matchers would need work. . Would inlining "simple" recursions provide a useful performance boost for the interpreters? JIT already does some of this, but it may not be worth it for the interpreters. . Redesign handling of class/nclass/xclass because the compile code logic is currently very contorted and obscure. Also there was a request for a way of re-defining \w (and therefore \W, \b, and \B). An in-pattern sequence such as (?w=[...]) was suggested. Easiest way would be simply to inline the class, with lookarounds for \b and \B. Ideally the setting should last till the end of the group, which means remembering all previous settings; maybe a fixed amount of stack would do - how deep would anyone want to nest these things? See GitHub issue #13 for a compendium of character class issues, including (?[...]) extended classes. . A user suggested something like --with-build-info to set a build information string that could be retrieved by pcre2_config(). However, there's no facility for a length limit in pcre2_config(), and what would be the encoding? . Quantified groups with a fixed count currently operate by replicating the group in the compiled bytecode. This may not really matter in these days of gigabyte memory, but perhaps another implementation might be considered. Needs coordination between the interpreters and JIT. . There are regular requests for variable-length lookbehinds. . See also any suggestions in the GitHub issues. Philip Hazel Email local part: Philip.Hazel Email domain: gmail.com Last updated: 25 April 2022