C: Regex library with MinGW

Question

How do I install a C regex into MinGW?

I'm using its GCC... I'm running Windows XP. I prefer an updated one.

Answer 1

TRE

According to the author it conforms more closely to POSIX than almost anything out there, and also has support for approximate regexs. It's quite up to date, and should work on XP.

It only claims success with Windows 98-XP/Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0. Cygwin 1.3-1.5 with GCC is also works, apparently, but if you do manage to compile and integrate it, give the author an email.

Answer 2

You have a few options:

• mingw-libgnurx from the user-contributed area of MinGW; from README:

  regex functionality from glibc 2.5 extracted into a separate library, for Win32

• msys-regex; from the package description:

  Current versions are derived from the GNULIB implementation of the regex module, but an older version of the runtime derived from the venerable GNU regex library, with a slightly different interface, is available for legacy MSYS applications

• pcre can be compiled with MinGW

If you'd run MinGW cross-compiler on Fedora, libgnurx and pcre are in the repository, ready to use with MinGW.

For those who use C++ Boost RegEx (which got into TR1) and QRegExp (from Qt) are also options.