# PCRE2Project/pcre2

PCRE2 development is based here.

Repository: https://github.com/PCRE2Project/pcre2
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/pcre2
Homepage: https://pcre2project.github.io/pcre2/
Language: C
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Last push: 2026-08-26T10:13:01+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 75/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 29, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 1839, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 316, "gap_med": 128.5, "n_releases_24m": 3}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1341, forks 280 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:26.150416+00:00)

## What it is
PCRE2 is a self-contained C library implementing Perl-compatible regular expression pattern matching, with Unicode support and an optional high-performance JIT engine. It is portable, easy to embed, and widely bundled in products like Apache, Git, Safari, PHP, and R.

## Use cases
- add perl-compatible regex matching to a C or C++ application
- embed a fast regex engine in another language runtime
- match Unicode text with regular expressions
- speed up regex-heavy workloads with a JIT compiler
- replace a platform's limited regex library with a full-featured one

## When to choose
- you need Perl-compatible regex semantics in a C/C++ project
- you need Unicode support and multiple character encodings
- you need a mature, portable, permissively licensed (BSD) regex library
- regex performance is critical and JIT compilation helps

## When to avoid
- you only need simple regexes available in your language's standard library
- you want a higher-level regex API in a scripting language rather than C
- you need a regex engine with linear-time guarantees like RE2

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: parser, developer-tools
- domain: parsers, developer-tools, programming-languages
- platform: windows, cross-platform, c
- tags: regex, regular-expressions, pcre, unicode, jit, c-library, embeddable, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- PCRE2Project/pcre2 (main) score 75

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:26.150416+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:43:43.352484+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/PCRE2Project/pcre2 (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:26.150416+00:00, sha b28b9fc8cb12)
  - homepage: https://pcre2project.github.io/pcre2/ (fetched 2026-08-29T12:02:30.348754+00:00, sha 12462282d4bf)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.