Quick start FAQ for C++ TR1 regular expressions

This is a FAQ in the sense of first asked questions. It’s not intended to be a long list of questions but only the first questions people are likely to ask. This page is intentionally very short. For more details, see Getting started with C++ TR1 regular expressions.

 

Q: Where can I get TR1?

A: Support for TR1 extensions in Visual Studio 2008 is added as a feature pack. Other implementations include the Boost and Dinkumware.

Q: What regular expression flavors are supported?

A: Depends on your implementation. Visual Studio 2008 supports these options: basic, extended, ECMAScript, awk, grep, egrep.

Q: What header do I include?

A: <regex>

Q: What namespace are things in?

A: std::tr1

Q: How do I do a match?

A: Construct a regex object and pass it to regex_search.

Q: How to I retrieve a match?

A: Use a form of regex_search that takes a match_result object as a parameter.

Q: How do a I a replace?

A: Use regex_replace.

Q: How do I do a global replace?

A: The function regex_replace does global replacements by default.

Q: How do I keep from doing a global replace?

A: Use the format_first_only flag with regex_replace.

Q: How do I make a regular expression case-insensitive?

A: Use the icase flag as a parameter to the regex constructor.