C what regex library should I use

Question

I m working on a commercial  not open source  C   project that runs on a  linux-based system   I need to do some regex within the C   code    I know   I now have 2 problems    QUESTION   What libraries do people who regularly do regex from C C   recommend I look into   A quick search has brought the following to my attention   1  Boost Regex  I need to go read the Boost Software License  but this question is not about software licenses   2  C  not C    POSIX regex   include  lt regex h gt   regcomp  regexec  etc    3  http   freshmeat net projects cpp regex    I know nothing about this one  seems to be GPL  therefore not usable on this project

User · Answer

I ve personally always used boost regex  although I don t have much need for regex in C     Microsoft Labs has a regex library too  called GRETA  http   research microsoft com projects greta   Apparently it s very fast and features a whole Perl 5 syntax  I haven t used it  but you may want to test it out

User · Answer

Boost Regex is very good and is slated to become part of the C  0x standard  it s already in TR1    Personally  I find Boost Xpressive much nicer to work with  It is a header-only library and it has some nice features such as static regexes  regexes compiled at compile time    Update  If you re using a C  11 compliant compiler  gcc 4 8 is NOT    use std  regex unless you have good reason to use something else

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Two more options   If you can write it in c  11 - Do the tutorial  http   www codeguru com cpp cpp cpp mfc stl article php c15339  Note  At the time of writing the only c  11 regex library that I know works is the clang llvm one  and only works on Mac  The GNU still doesn t implement regex yet  I don t know about Visual Studio  Most people still use the boost regex implementation     Or you can use ragel to generate a finite state machine to do the parsing for you  and  generate the C C   code implementation  http   www complang org ragel   I used it a little to generate code to parse json  This ragel file  https   github com matiu2 yajp blob master parser number rl is used to generate this code https   github com matiu2 yajp blob master parser json hpp L254 and this finite state machine diagram       Update 1   lvm s libc   regex works on ubuntu 14 04  libc  -dev - LLVM C   Standard library  development files   When compiling  clang   -std c  11 -lc   -I usr include c   v1      Update 2   I m currently enjoying boost spirit 3 - I like it more than regex  because it has BNF style rules and is well thought out   Older  more documented  Spirit Qi libs found here

User · Answer

I ve personally always used boost regex  although I don t have much need for regex in C     Microsoft Labs has a regex library too  called GRETA  http   research microsoft com projects greta   Apparently it s very fast and features a whole Perl 5 syntax  I haven t used it  but you may want to test it out

User · Answer

C   has a builtin regex library since TR1  AFAIK Boost s regex library is very compatible with it and can be used as a replacement  if your standard library doesn t provide TR1

User · Answer

I ve personally always used boost regex  although I don t have much need for regex in C     Microsoft Labs has a regex library too  called GRETA  http   research microsoft com projects greta   Apparently it s very fast and features a whole Perl 5 syntax  I haven t used it  but you may want to test it out

User · Answer

Thanks for all the suggestions   I tried out a few things today  and with the stuff we re trying to do  I opted for the simplest solution where I don t have to download any other 3rd-party library   In the end  I  include  lt regex h gt  and used the standard C POSIX calls regcomp   and regexec     Not C    but in a pinch this proved to be the easiest

User · Answer

In C   projects past  I have used PCRE with good success  It s very complete and well-tested since it s used in many high profile projects  And I see that Google has contributed a set of C   wrappers for PCRE recently  too

User · Answer

Boost Regex is very good and is slated to become part of the C  0x standard  it s already in TR1    Personally  I find Boost Xpressive much nicer to work with  It is a header-only library and it has some nice features such as static regexes  regexes compiled at compile time    Update  If you re using a C  11 compliant compiler  gcc 4 8 is NOT    use std  regex unless you have good reason to use something else

User · Answer

Boost has regex  in it   That should fill the bill

User · Answer

Thanks for all the suggestions   I tried out a few things today  and with the stuff we re trying to do  I opted for the simplest solution where I don t have to download any other 3rd-party library   In the end  I  include  lt regex h gt  and used the standard C POSIX calls regcomp   and regexec     Not C    but in a pinch this proved to be the easiest

User · Answer

Thanks for all the suggestions   I tried out a few things today  and with the stuff we re trying to do  I opted for the simplest solution where I don t have to download any other 3rd-party library   In the end  I  include  lt regex h gt  and used the standard C POSIX calls regcomp   and regexec     Not C    but in a pinch this proved to be the easiest

User · Answer

Noone here said anything about the one that comes with C  0x  If you are using a compiler and the STL that supports C  0x you could just use that instead of having another lib in your project

User · Answer

Thanks for all the suggestions   I tried out a few things today  and with the stuff we re trying to do  I opted for the simplest solution where I don t have to download any other 3rd-party library   In the end  I  include  lt regex h gt  and used the standard C POSIX calls regcomp   and regexec     Not C    but in a pinch this proved to be the easiest

User · Answer

Two more options   If you can write it in c  11 - Do the tutorial  http   www codeguru com cpp cpp cpp mfc stl article php c15339  Note  At the time of writing the only c  11 regex library that I know works is the clang llvm one  and only works on Mac  The GNU still doesn t implement regex yet  I don t know about Visual Studio  Most people still use the boost regex implementation     Or you can use ragel to generate a finite state machine to do the parsing for you  and  generate the C C   code implementation  http   www complang org ragel   I used it a little to generate code to parse json  This ragel file  https   github com matiu2 yajp blob master parser number rl is used to generate this code https   github com matiu2 yajp blob master parser json hpp L254 and this finite state machine diagram       Update 1   lvm s libc   regex works on ubuntu 14 04  libc  -dev - LLVM C   Standard library  development files   When compiling  clang   -std c  11 -lc   -I usr include c   v1      Update 2   I m currently enjoying boost spirit 3 - I like it more than regex  because it has BNF style rules and is well thought out   Older  more documented  Spirit Qi libs found here

User · Answer

I ve personally always used boost regex  although I don t have much need for regex in C     Microsoft Labs has a regex library too  called GRETA  http   research microsoft com projects greta   Apparently it s very fast and features a whole Perl 5 syntax  I haven t used it  but you may want to test it out

User · Answer

Boost has regex  in it   That should fill the bill

User · Answer

I faced a similar situation and ended up using Henry Spencers Regexp Engine http   www codeproject com KB string spencerregexp aspx

User · Answer

Boost Regex is very good and is slated to become part of the C  0x standard  it s already in TR1    Personally  I find Boost Xpressive much nicer to work with  It is a header-only library and it has some nice features such as static regexes  regexes compiled at compile time    Update  If you re using a C  11 compliant compiler  gcc 4 8 is NOT    use std  regex unless you have good reason to use something else

User · Answer

In C   projects past  I have used PCRE with good success  It s very complete and well-tested since it s used in many high profile projects  And I see that Google has contributed a set of C   wrappers for PCRE recently  too

User · Answer

Noone here said anything about the one that comes with C  0x  If you are using a compiler and the STL that supports C  0x you could just use that instead of having another lib in your project

User · Answer

In C   projects past  I have used PCRE with good success  It s very complete and well-tested since it s used in many high profile projects  And I see that Google has contributed a set of C   wrappers for PCRE recently  too

User · Answer

I faced a similar situation and ended up using Henry Spencers Regexp Engine http   www codeproject com KB string spencerregexp aspx

User · Answer

Boost has regex  in it   That should fill the bill

User · Answer

C   has a builtin regex library since TR1  AFAIK Boost s regex library is very compatible with it and can be used as a replacement  if your standard library doesn t provide TR1

User · Answer

You can also look at fast regex library that was developed at Yandex search engine for doing fast matches of thousands of patterns against huge amounts of data

User · Answer

C   has a builtin regex library since TR1  AFAIK Boost s regex library is very compatible with it and can be used as a replacement  if your standard library doesn t provide TR1

User · Answer

Boost Regex is very good and is slated to become part of the C  0x standard  it s already in TR1    Personally  I find Boost Xpressive much nicer to work with  It is a header-only library and it has some nice features such as static regexes  regexes compiled at compile time    Update  If you re using a C  11 compliant compiler  gcc 4 8 is NOT    use std  regex unless you have good reason to use something else

User · Answer

In C   projects past  I have used PCRE with good success  It s very complete and well-tested since it s used in many high profile projects  And I see that Google has contributed a set of C   wrappers for PCRE recently  too

User · Answer

Boost has regex  in it   That should fill the bill

User · Answer

C   has a builtin regex library since TR1  AFAIK Boost s regex library is very compatible with it and can be used as a replacement  if your standard library doesn t provide TR1

User · Answer

You can also look at fast regex library that was developed at Yandex search engine for doing fast matches of thousands of patterns against huge amounts of data

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