Looking for: C/C++ Regex library that supports Named Captures

Question

I'm thinking about writing a small application that will help me mass rename files. I currently use an application named 'RegexRenamer', which (I'm assuming) uses the .NET regex engine. The application is fine, but is sort of clunky.

So what I'm looking for is a C/C++ regex library that I can build my custom program off of. Anything that is small and lightweight is preferred (.Net seems heavy).

Thanks.

Answer 1

boost regex supports named captures.

This chart in Wikipedia gives a comparison of several regex engines in a table of features vs library.

Answer 2

• Perl Compatible Regular Expressions provided by the library PCRE
• Oniguruma which is used by Ruby 1.9, PHP 5, and TextMate

Answer 3

Google's open sourced RE2 (PCRE compatible)

Answer 4

Another free application, Bulk Rename Utility, already exist with this functionality as well.

Answer 5

Barring some really good reason to choose something else, use the regular expression library in TR1 -- it's been adopted into C++0x almost unchanged, so when REs become a standard part of C++, using the standard one will be a simple matter of changing "std::tr1" to "std::" and re-compiling.

That was based on the Boost regex library, so if you start with them, the port should be pretty easy as well, though I believe Boost includes some features that weren't adopted into the standard.