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

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.