REGEX
=====

This package provides a library exposing the GNULIB implementation
of the regex module, which provides implementations of the POSIX,
GNU, and BSD regular expression functions. It is intended as an
update to the venerable GNU regex library, from 1993:
   http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/old-gnu/regex/regex-0.12.tar.gz

The purpose of this library is to support MSYS applications that
require POSIX regex functionality not supplied by that system's
runtime library.  Therefore, this package is tailored for building
the library for win32 platforms (e.g. it uses an explicit DEF file
to control exported symbols, and so would need modification for use
on non-win32 platforms).

This package contains no actual original code; it provides only
appropriate build machinery to package code from the GNULIB project,
so it has no traditional version number: merely a date on which
the relevant GNULIB code was imported.

The library provided by this package differs from the old GNU
regex library in two significant ways:
  1) Clients that need the declarations of the BSD regular
     expression functions re_comp and re_exec must #define
     _REGEX_RE_COMP before #including <regex.h>. This is #_
     acceptable, because the known MSYS clients require only
     the POSIX, not BSD, functions.
  2) the obsolete re_max_failures variable is not exported by
     the new library.
Because of these changes, this implementation uses a new SONAME
based on -version-info 1:0:0 instead of 0:0:0. However, it is
assumed that these issues are an acceptable price to pay in order
to use a modern, well-maintained regex implementation rather than
a fifteen year old, unmaintained one.

The unique files in this distribution:
   COPYING.LESSERv2
   ChangeLog
   Makefile.am
   NEWS
   README
   configure.ac
   local/m4/regex.m4.diff
   regex.def
Everything else is generated by
   gnulib-tool --lgpl=2 --libtool --local-dir=local --import regex
   autoreconf -fvi
with the exception that the lib/Makefile.am file generated by
gnulib-tool is modified to specify
   AM_CPPFLAGS = -D_REGEX_RE_COMP

