# pcre2_serialize_decode man page

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## SYNOPSIS

#include <pcre2.h>

int32_t pcre2_serialize_decode(pcre2_code **codes, int32_t number_of_codes, const uint8_t *bytes, pcre2_general_context *gcontext);

## DESCRIPTION

This function decodes a serialized set of compiled patterns back into a list of individual patterns. This is possible only on a host that is running the same version of PCRE2, with the same code unit width, and the host must also have the same endianness, pointer width and PCRE2_SIZE type. The arguments for pcre2_serialize_decode() are:

      codes            pointer to a vector in which to build the list
      number_of_codes  number of slots in the vector
      bytes            the serialized byte stream
      gcontext         pointer to a general context or NULL

The bytes argument must point to a block of data that was originally created by pcre2_serialize_encode(), though it may have been saved on disc or elsewhere in the meantime. If there are more codes in the serialized data than slots in the list, only those compiled patterns that will fit are decoded. The yield of the function is the number of decoded patterns, or one of the following negative error codes:

      PCRE2_ERROR_BADDATA   number_of_codes is zero or less
      PCRE2_ERROR_BADMAGIC  mismatch of id bytes in bytes
      PCRE2_ERROR_BADMODE   mismatch of variable unit size or PCRE version
      PCRE2_ERROR_NOMEMORY  memory allocation failed
      PCRE2_ERROR_NULL      codes or bytes is NULL

PCRE2_ERROR_BADMAGIC may mean that the data is corrupt, or that it was compiled on a system with different endianness.

There is a complete description of the PCRE2 native API in the pcre2api page and a description of the serialization functions in the pcre2serialize page.

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