regexp(n)						       Tcl Built-In Commands							 regexp(n)

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NAME

       regexp - Match a regular expression against a string

SYNOPSIS

       regexp ?switches? exp string ?matchVar? ?subMatchVar subMatchVar ...?
_________________________________________________________________

DESCRIPTION

       Determines  whether  the  regular expression exp matches part or all of string and returns 1 if it does, 0 if it doesn't, unless -inline is
       specified (see below).  (Regular expression matching is described in the re_syntax reference page.)

       If additional arguments are specified after string then they are treated as the names of variables in which  to	return	information  about
       which part(s) of string matched exp.  MatchVar will be set to the range of string that matched all of exp.  The first subMatchVar will con-
       tain the characters in string that matched the leftmost parenthesized subexpression within exp, the next subMatchVar will contain the char-
       acters that matched the next parenthesized subexpression to the right in exp, and so on.

       If the initial arguments to regexp start with - then they are treated as switches.  The following switches are currently supported:

       -about	      Instead  of  attempting to match the regular expression, returns a list containing information about the regular expression.
		      The first element of the list is a subexpression count.  The second element is a list of property names that describe  vari-
		      ous attributes of the regular expression. This switch is primarily intended for debugging purposes.

       -expanded      Enables use of the expanded regular expression syntax where whitespace and comments are ignored.	This is the same as speci-
		      fying the (?x) embedded option (see METASYNTAX, below).

       -indices       Changes what is stored in the subMatchVars.  Instead of storing the matching characters from string, each variable will con-
		      tain  a  list  of two decimal strings giving the indices in string of the first and last characters in the matching range of
		      characters.

       -line	      Enables newline-sensitive matching.  By default, newline is a completely ordinary character with no special  meaning.   With
		      this  flag,  `[^' bracket expressions and `.' never match newline, `^' matches an empty string after any newline in addition
		      to its normal function, and `$' matches an empty string before any newline in addition to its normal function.  This flag is
		      equivalent to specifying both -linestop and -lineanchor, or the (?n) embedded option (see METASYNTAX, below).

       -linestop      Changes  the behavior of `[^' bracket expressions and `.' so that they stop at newlines.	This is the same as specifying the
		      (?p) embedded option (see METASYNTAX, below).

       -lineanchor    Changes the behavior of `^' and `$' (the ``anchors'') so they match the beginning and end of a line respectively.   This	is
		      the same as specifying the (?w) embedded option (see METASYNTAX, below).

       -nocase	      Causes upper-case characters in string to be treated as lower case during the matching process.				   |

       -all																	   |
		      Causes  the  regular expression to be matched as many times as possible in the string, returning the total number of matches |
		      found.  If this is specified with match variables, they will continue information for the last match only.		   |

       -inline																	   |
		      Causes the command to return, as a list, the data that would otherwise be placed in match variables.   When  using  -inline, |
		      match  variables may not be specified.  If used with -all, the list will be concatenated at each iteration, such that a flat |
		      list is always returned.	For each match iteration, the command will append the overall match data,  plus  one  element  for |
		      each subexpression in the regular expression.  Examples are:								   |
			  regexp -inline -- {w(w)} " inlined "										   |
		       => {in n}														   |
			  regexp -all -inline -- {w(w)} " inlined "										   |
		       => {in n li i ne e}													   |

       -start index																   |
		      Specifies a character index offset into the string to start matching the regular expression at.  When using this switch, `^' |
		      will not match the beginning of the line, and A will still match the start of the string at index.  If -indices	is  speci- |
		      fied,  the  indices  will be indexed starting from the absolute beginning of the input string.  index will be constrained to |
		      the bounds of the input string.

       --	      Marks the end of switches.  The argument following this one will be treated as exp even if it starts with a -.

       If there are more subMatchVar's than parenthesized subexpressions within exp, or if a particular subexpression in  exp  doesn't	match  the
       string  (e.g.  because  it  was in a portion of the expression that wasn't matched), then the corresponding subMatchVar will be set to ``-1
       -1'' if -indices has been specified or to an empty string otherwise.

SEE ALSO

       re_syntax(n), regsub(n)

KEYWORDS

       match, regular expression, string

Tcl									8.3								 regexp(n)