Regex.matchAllFull

Using the standard algorithm for regular expression matching only the longest match in the string is retrieved, it is not possible to obtain all the available matches. For instance matching "<a> <b> <c>" against the pattern "<.*>" you get "<a> <b> <c>".

This function uses a different algorithm (called DFA, i.e. deterministic finite automaton), so it can retrieve all the possible matches, all starting at the same point in the string. For instance matching "<a> <b> <c>" against the pattern "<.*>;" you would obtain three matches: "<a> <b> <c>", "<a> <b>" and "<a>".

The number of matched strings is retrieved using g_match_info_get_match_count(). To obtain the matched strings and their position you can use, respectively, g_match_info_fetch() and g_match_info_fetch_pos(). Note that the strings are returned in reverse order of length; that is, the longest matching string is given first.

Note that the DFA algorithm is slower than the standard one and it is not able to capture substrings, so backreferences do not work.

Setting @start_position differs from just passing over a shortened string and setting #G_REGEX_MATCH_NOTBOL in the case of a pattern that begins with any kind of lookbehind assertion, such as "\b".

A #GMatchInfo structure, used to get information on the match, is stored in @match_info if not %NULL. Note that if @match_info is not %NULL then it is created even if the function returns %FALSE, i.e. you must free it regardless if regular expression actually matched.

@string is not copied and is used in #GMatchInfo internally. If you use any #GMatchInfo method (except g_match_info_free()) after freeing or modifying @string then the behaviour is undefined.