Req #76124 [NEW]: Better way to detect PCRE errors such as invalid patterns

From: graefrath at femu dot rwth-aachen dot de Operating system: PHP version: Irrelevant Package: PCRE related Bug Type: Feature/Change Request Bug description:Better way to detect PCRE errors such as invalid patterns Description: ------------ preg_match returns false in case of an error. However, not all errors that can occur have corresponding error codes returned by preg_last_error. Additionally, the last error is not cleared when a PCRE function is called and there is no function to manually clear it. This makes it very hard to reliably detect errors such as invalid patterns. Consider the following example: @preg_match("/./u", "\xff"); // returns false and sets preg_last_error to PREG_BAD_UTF8_ERROR @preg_match("invalidpattern", ""); // returns false, but preg_last_error is still PREG_BAD_UTF8_ERROR The only way to detect the invalid pattern error is to catch the PHP warning that is being raised. This seems really inconsistent to me. Since PHP < 7 does not have error_clear_last yet, it is also not trivial to figure out whether you have to look at the last PHP error or the last PCRE error, since a PHP error message starting with preg_ could also be from a previous call. Expected result: ---------------- I expect the return value of preg_last_error to reflect all kinds of errors correctly, not just some of them. Actual result: -------------- preg_last_error returns a valid error code only for some errors, while other are indicated by PHP warnings. -- Edit bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=76124&edit=1 -- Try a snapshot (PHP 5.4): https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=trysnapshot54 Try a snapshot (PHP 5.5): https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=trysnapshot55 Try a snapshot (trunk): https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=trysnapshottrunk Fixed in SVN: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=fixed Fixed in release: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=alreadyfixed Need backtrace: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=needtrace Need Reproduce Script: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=needscript Try newer version: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=oldversion Not developer issue: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=support Expected behavior: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=notwrong Not enough info: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=notenoughinfo Submitted twice: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=submittedtwice register_globals: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=globals PHP 4 support discontinued: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=php4 Daylight Savings: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=dst IIS Stability: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=isapi Install GNU Sed: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=gnused Floating point limitations: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=float No Zend Extensions: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=nozend MySQL Configuration Error: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=76124&r=mysqlcfg