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Regular Expressions in LoadRunner

Dmitry Motevich posted a challenge for getting regular expressions working in LoadRunner. Regular expressions in C isn’t pretty, but here it is:

I’ll assume you are running on Windows.

1. First, download the Binaries and Developer Files for PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions):
   http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/pcre.htm
2. Unzip into c:\pcre
3. Modify c:\pcre\include\pcre.h by commenting out the include for stdlib.h:

   //#include <stdlib.h>

4. In your LoadRunner script, add to globals.h:

   #include "c:\\pcre\\include\\pcre.h"

5. In LR script, add:

   lr_load_dll("c:\\pcre\\bin\\pcre3.dll");

Here is an example that does a simple regex:

Action()
{
    pcre *re;
    const char *error;
    int erroffset;

    int rc;
    int ovector[30];

	lr_load_dll("c:\\tools\\pcre\\bin\\pcre3.dll");

    re = pcre_compile(
           "^A.*Z",          /* the pattern */
           0,                /* default options */
           &error,           /* for error message */
           &erroffset,       /* for error offset */
           NULL);            /* use default character tables */

    rc = pcre_exec(
           re,             /* result of pcre_compile() */
           NULL,           /* we didn't study the pattern */
           "ABCXYZ",  /* the subject string */
           6,             /* the length of the subject string */
           0,              /* start at offset 0 in the subject */
           0,              /* default options */
           ovector,        /* vector of integers for substring information */
           30);            /* number of elements (NOT size in bytes) */

	lr_message("rc=%d",rc);

	return 0;
}

Like I said, regex in C isn’t pretty