Notes about the WIN32 port of GNU REGEX

This library provides a POSIX style regular expression compilation and execution facility suitable for use with C and C++ programs. See also winregex.h for other libraries.

Download gnu_regex.exe (218k, a self-extracting info-zip archive) to obtain all source code, project make files, and some already compiled binaries. Includes the h and lib files needed by developers who compile against and link with the gnu_regex.lib library. The file regex.doc provides documentation. At runtime of your application the gnu_regex.dll is the only required component. The test_gnu_regex.mak file can be used with Microsoft Developer's Studio (VC++) to recompile from sources.

The original GNU sources are here: gatekeeper.dec.com, and this pointer satisfies the FSF license agreement requirement to make a copy of the source code and the FSF Copyright statement available to recipients of executable versions.

Here is the gnu regex documentation formatted as html regex_toc.html.

After searching a few places on the internet I could not find a WIN32 port of any kind of REGEX. Therefore I obtained the GNU REGEX and did the port myself and have made the binaries and some additional sources available on the web. The resulting gnu_regex.dll is useful with my scheme interpreter SIOD and other purposes in general. If there are better implementations of regular expression facilities available please let me know. I also ported the Henry Spencer regex and found it satisfactory, faster in some cases, slower in others, see hs_regex.html.

-George J. Carrette, 13-MAR-97
  1. I used gnu regex-0.12.tar.gz, extracting the files regex.h and regex.c.
  2. I used Microsoft Developer Studio Standard Edition version 4.0
  3. The main project is a console application, test_gnu_regex which includes gnu_regex dll as a subproject. General project settings must be edited to make sure that all the intermediate files (for both project and subproject) go into the same directories. Establishing project/subproject relationships is tricky but well worth the effort in terms of convenience later.
  4. Insert the files gnu_regex.def and regex.c into the gnu_regex.dll project. Insert test_regex.c into the test_gnu_regex.exe project.
  5. Project C/CC+ settings must include the following preprocessor defintions: REGEX_MALLOC,STDC_HEADERS, in all build configurations of gnu_regex.
  6. There are dozens of compiler warnings, including signed/unsigned mismatch, const qualifier differences, and pointer mismatches. None of which seem to matter, at least on the intel platform. No modifications to the FSF supplied sources regex.c or regex.h are required if you are willing to ignore the compiler warnings.
  7. The file release.bat creates the compressed tar files which make up the distribution I have posted to the web.

This file is © Copyright 1997 by George J. Carrette.

http://people.delphi.com/gjc/gnu_regex.html