# Does Julia use original PCRE or PCRE2?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/does-julia-use-original-pcre-or-pcre2/84203>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** question, regex\
**Created:** [July 14, 2022, 2:35am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/does-julia-use-original-pcre-or-pcre2/84203 "2022-07-14T02:35:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ProvocaTeach](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/provocateach/32/30788_2.png) [@ProvocaTeach](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ProvocaTeach)\
**Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 2:35am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/does-julia-use-original-pcre-or-pcre2/84203/1 "2022-07-14T02:35:13Z")

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Does Julia 1.7.3 use the _original_ Perl-compatible regular expressions (PCRE) or the _second_ version (PCRE2)?

The [Julia docs on regexes](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/strings/#man-regex-literals) say Julia uses PCRE, but they link to the [PCRE2 spec](http://www.pcre.org/current/doc/html/pcre2syntax.html) while making no mention of the version.

I realize this is kind of a mundane question, but I thought it might be useful to have a public answer (especially for new Julia programmers who are Googling).

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**Author:** ![jling](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jling/32/212909_2.png) [@jling](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jling)\
**Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 2:36am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/does-julia-use-original-pcre-or-pcre2/84203/2 "2022-07-14T02:36:09Z")

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> <https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/415c668627dc1e258773a6351f9a824cd5764757/base/pcre.jl#L3>