diff -r 000000000000 -r 7f656887cf89 libraries/spcre/libpcre/pcre/doc/perltest.txt --- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/libraries/spcre/libpcre/pcre/doc/perltest.txt Wed Jun 23 15:52:26 2010 +0100 @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +The perltest program +-------------------- + +The perltest program tests Perl's regular expressions; it has the same +specification as pcretest, and so can be given identical input, except that +input patterns can be followed only by Perl's lower case modifiers and /+ (as +used by pcretest), which is recognized and handled by the program. + +The data lines are processed as Perl double-quoted strings, so if they contain +" $ or @ characters, these have to be escaped. For this reason, all such +characters in testinput1 and testinput4 are escaped so that they can be used +for perltest as well as for pcretest. The special upper case pattern +modifiers such as /A that pcretest recognizes, and its special data line +escapes, are not used in these files. The output should be identical, apart +from the initial identifying banner. + +The perltest script can also test UTF-8 features. It works as is for Perl 5.8 +or higher. It recognizes the special modifier /8 that pcretest uses to invoke +UTF-8 functionality. The testinput4 file can be fed to perltest to run +compatible UTF-8 tests. + +For Perl 5.6, perltest won't work unmodified for the UTF-8 tests. You need to +uncomment the "use utf8" lines that it contains. It is best to do this on a +copy of the script, because for non-UTF-8 tests, these lines should remain +commented out. + +The other testinput files are not suitable for feeding to perltest, since they +make use of the special upper case modifiers and escapes that pcretest uses to +test some features of PCRE. Some of these files also contains malformed regular +expressions, in order to check that PCRE diagnoses them correctly. + +Philip Hazel +September 2004