INTRODUCTION
------------

I have put in this directory a compiled version of Philip Hazel's PCRE library
version 6.x (with some minor modifications needed to make it fully accessible
from Borland Delphi), my Delphi import units for the PCRE and PCRE POSIX APIs,
and a Delphi unit (PCRE.pas) containing my own Delphi wrapper
interfaces around Philip's PCRE engine.

I am releasing my Delphi units under the same conditions as Philip Hazel's PCRE library.
You can find a copy of the original PCRE LICENCE in this directory (see the file
PCRE_LICENCE).

Documentation about PCRE regular expression syntax, as well as PCRE's original
C source files, can be downloaded from the Cambridge University FTP site at:

	ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/

PCRE docs are essential if you want to make good use of PCRE! :)

The sources of my customised version of PCRE can instead be downloaded
from my web site (http://www.renatomancuso.com).

These Delphi wrapper interfaces and classes have been losely modeled on the
Microsoft .NET 1.x regular expression classes contained in the
System.Text.RegularExpressions namespace.
Please refer to the MSDN library website for more information
about the .NET classes and interfaces (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/).

A little UML diagram illustrating the relationships among the various interfaces
can be found in the classdiagram.gif file.

FILES
-----

pcre.dll                - PCRE 5.0 compiled with MS Visual C++.NET 7.1
pcre_dll.pas            - Delphi import unit for PCRE
pcre.pas                - Delphi wrapper around PCRE

LICENCE                 - licence
PCRE_LICENCE            - PCRE licence
classdiagram.gif        - UML Class Diagram of my Delphi interface


USAGE NOTE
------------------------------

If you want to use these interface in your Delphi projects, follow
these steps:

1) Add the following files to your project:

		pcre_dll.pas
		pcre.pas


2) Copy the pcre.dll file in the same directory which contains your
   executable (for most small projects this is often the same directory
   which contains your sources)

3) Add the pcre unit to the uses clause


SOME (SHORT) TECHNICAL BITS
--------------------------

The pcre.dll has been compiled using MS Visual C++.Net 2003 (MSVC 7.1).
The C runtime has been linked statically to ensure that the resulting .dll
is completely self contained. The multithread safe version of the C runtime
has been used.


NOTICE
------

Regular expression support is provided by the PCRE library package,
which is open source software, written by Philip Hazel, and copyright
by the University of Cambridge, England.

The latest release of PCRE is always available from:

  ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre-xxx.tar.gz

The original PCRE LICENCE file can be found in the root directory of this
distribution with the name of PCRE_LICENCE.


DISCLAIMER
----------

This software is distributed in the hope that it will be
useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE.


February 2008

Renato Mancuso <mancuso@renatomancuso.com>

