1BT_POSTPROCESS(1) btparse BT_POSTPROCESS(1)
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6 bt_postprocess - post-processing of BibTeX strings, values, and entries
7
9 void bt_postprocess_string (char * s,
10 btshort options)
11 char * bt_postprocess_value (AST * value,
13 btshort options,
14 boolean replace);
15 char * bt_postprocess_field (AST * field,
17 btshort options,
18 boolean replace);
19 void bt_postprocess_entry (AST * entry,
21 btshort options);
22
24 When btparse parses a BibTeX entry, it initially stores the results in
25 an abstract syntax tree (AST), in a form exactly mirroring the parsed
26 data. For example, the entry
27 @Article{Jones:1997a,
29 AuThOr = "Bob Jones" # and # "Jim Smith ",
30 TITLE = "Feeding Habits of
31 the Common Cockroach",
32 JoUrNaL = j_ent,
33 YEAR = 1997
34 }
35 would parse to an AST that could be represented as follows:
37 (entry,"Article")
39 (key,"Jones:1997a")
40 (field,"AuThOr")
41 (string,"Bob Jones")
42 (macro,"and")
43 (string,"Jim Smith ")
44 (field,"TITLE")
45 (string,"Feeding Habits of the Common Cockroach")
46 (field,"JoUrNaL")
47 (macro,"j_ent")
48 (field,"YEAR")
49 (number,"1997")
50 The advantage of this form is that all the important information in the
52 entry is readily available by traversing the tree using the functions
53 described in bt_traversal. This obvious problem is that the data is a
54 little too raw to be immediately useful: entry types and field names
55 are inconsistently capitalized, strings are full of unwanted
56 whitespace, field values not reduced to single strings, and so forth.
57 All of these problems are addressed by btparse's post-processing
59 functions, described here. Normally, you won't have to call these
60 functions---the library does the Right Thing for you after parsing each
61 entry, and you can customize what exactly the Right Thing is for your
62 application. (For instance, you can tell it to expand macros, but not
63 to concatenate substrings together.) However, it's conceivable that
64 you might wish to move the post-processing into your own code and out
65 of the library's control. More likely, you could have strings that
66 come from something other than BibTeX files that you would like to have
67 treated as BibTeX strings; for that situation, the post-processing
68 functions are essential. Finally, you might just be curious about what
69 exactly happens to your data after it's parsed. If so, you've come to
70 the right place for excruciatingly detailed explanations.
71
73 btparse offers four points of entry to its post-processing code. Of
74 these, probably only the first and last---for processing individual
75 strings and whole entries---will be commonly used.
76 Post-processing entry points
78 To understand why four entry points are offered, an explanation of the
79 sample AST shown above will help. First of all, the whole entry is
80 represented by the "(entry,"Article")" node; this node has the entry
81 key and all its field/value pairs as children. Entry nodes are
82 returned by bt_parse_entry() and bt_parse_entry_s() (see bt_input) as
83 well as bt_next_entry() (which traverses a list of entries returned
84 from bt_parse_file()---see bt_traversal). Whole entries may be post-
85 processed with bt_postprocess_entry().
86 You may also need to post-process a single field, or just the value
88 associated with it. (The difference is that processing the field can
89 change the field name---e.g. to lowercase---in addition to the field
90 value.) The "(field,"AuThOr")" node above is an example of a field
91 sub-AST, and "(string,"Bob Jones")" is the first node in the list of
92 simple values representing that field's value. (Recall that a field
93 value is, in general, a list of simple values.) Field nodes are
94 returned by bt_next_field(), value nodes by bt_next_value(). The
95 former may be passed to bt_postprocess_field() for post-processing, the
96 latter to bt_postprocess_value().
97 Finally, individual strings may wander into your program from many
99 places other than a btparse AST. For that reason,
100 bt_postprocess_string() is available for post-processing arbitrary
101 strings.
102 Post-processing options
104 All of the post-processing routines have an "options" parameter, which
105 you can use to fine-tune the post-processing. (This is just like the
106 per-metatype string-processing options that you can set before parsing
107 entries; see bt_set_stringopts() in bt_input.) Like elsewhere in the
108 library, "options" is a bitmap constructed by or'ing together various
109 predefined constants. These constants and their effects are documented
110 in "String processing option macros" in btparse.
111 bt_postprocess_string ()
113 void bt_postprocess_string (char * s,
114 btshort options)
115 Post-processes an individual string, "s", which is modified in
117 place. The only post-processing option that makes sense on
118 individual strings is whether to collapse whitespace according to
119 the BibTeX rules; thus, if "options & BTO_COLLAPSE" is false, this
120 function has no effect. (Although it makes a complete pass over
121 the string anyways. This is for future expansion.)
122 The exact rules for collapsing whitespace are simple: non-space
124 whitespace characters (tabs and newlines mainly) are converted to
125 space, any strings of more than one space within are collapsed to a
126 single space, and any leading or trailing spaces are deleted.
127 (Ensuring that all whitespace is spaces is actually done by
128 btparse's lexical scanner, so strings in btparse ASTs will never
129 have whitespace apart from space. Likewise, any strings passed to
130 bt_postprocess_string() should not contain non-space whitespace
131 characters.)
132 bt_postprocess_value ()
134 char * bt_postprocess_value (AST * value,
135 btshort options,
136 boolean replace);
137 Post-processes a single field value, which is the head of a list of
139 simple values as returned by bt_next_value(). All of the relevant
140 string-processing options come into play here: conversion of
141 numbers to strings ("BTO_CONVERT"), macro expansion ("BTO_EXPAND"),
142 collapsing of whitespace ("BTO_COLLAPSE"), and string pasting
143 ("BTO_PASTE"). Since pasting substrings together without first
144 expanding macros and converting numbers would be nonsensical,
145 attempting to do so is a fatal error.
146 If "replace" is true, then the list headed by "value" will be
148 replaced by a list representing the processed value. That is, if
149 string pasting is turned on ("options & BTO_PASTE" is true), then
150 this list will be collapsed to a single node containing the single
151 string that results from pasting together all the substrings. If
152 string pasting is not on, then each node in the list will be left
153 intact, but will have its text replaced by processed text.
154 If "replace" is false, then a new string will be built on the fly
156 and returned by the function. Note that if pasting is not on in
157 this case, you will only get the last string in the list. (It
158 doesn't really make a lot of sense to post-process a value without
159 pasting unless you're replacing it with the new value, though.)
160 Returns the string that resulted from processing the whole value,
162 which only makes sense if pasting was on or there was only one
163 value in the list. If a multiple-value list was processed without
164 pasting, the last string in the list is returned (after
165 processing).
166 Consider what might be done to the value of the "author" field in
168 the above example, which is the concatenation of a string, a macro,
169 and another string. Assume that the macro "and" expands to " and
170 ", and that the variable "value" points to the sub-AST for this
171 value. The original sub-AST corresponding to this value is
172 (string,"Bob Jones")
174 (macro,"and")
175 (string,"Jim Smith ")
176 To fully process this value in-place, you would call
178 bt_postprocess_value (value, BTO_FULL, TRUE);
180 This would convert the value to a single-element list,
182 (string,"Bob Jones and Jim Smith")
184 and return the fully-processed string "Bob Jones and Jim Smith".
186 Note that the "and" macro has been expanded, interpolated between
187 the two literal strings, everything pasted together, and finally
188 whitespace collapsed. (Collapsing whitespace before concatenating
189 the strings would be a bad idea.)
190 (Incidentally, "BTO_FULL" is just a macro for the combination of
192 all possible string-processing options, currently:
193 BTO_CONVERT | BTO_EXPAND | BTO_PASTE | BTO_COLLAPSE
195 There are two other similar shortcut macros: "BTO_MACRO" to express
197 the special string-processing done on macro values, which is the
198 same as "BTO_FULL" except for the absence of "BTO_COLLAPSE"; and
199 "BTO_MINIMAL", which means no string-processing is to be done.)
200 Let's say you'd rather preserve the list nature of the value, while
202 expanding macros and converting any numbers to strings. (This
203 conversion is trivial: it just changes the type of the node from
204 "BTAST_NUMBER" to "BTAST_STRING". "Number" values are always
205 stored as a string of digits, just as they appear in the file.)
206 This would be done with the call
207 bt_postprocess_value
209 (value, BTO_CONVERT|BTO_EXPAND|BTO_COLLAPSE,TRUE);
210 which would change the list to
212 (string,"Bob Jones")
214 (string,"and")
215 (string,"Jim Smith")
216 Note that whitespace is collapsed here before any concatenation can
218 be done; this is probably a bad idea. But you can do it if you
219 wish. (If you get any ideas about cooking up your own value post-
220 processing scheme by doing it in little steps like this, take a
221 look at the source to bt_postprocess_value(); it should dissuade
222 you from such a venture.)
223 bt_postprocess_field ()
225 char * bt_postprocess_field (AST * field,
226 btshort options,
227 boolean replace);
228 This is little more than a front-end to bt_postprocess_value(); the
230 only difference is that you pass it a "field" AST node (eg. the
231 "(field,"AuThOr")" in the above example), and that it transforms
232 the field name in addition to its value. In particular, the field
233 name is forced to lowercase; this behaviour is (currently) not
234 optional.
235 Returns the string returned by bt_postprocess_value().
237 bt_postprocess_entry ()
239 void bt_postprocess_entry (AST * entry,
240 btshort options);
241 Post-processes all values in an entry. If "entry" points to the
243 AST for a "regular" or "macro definition" entry, then the values
244 are just what you'd expect: everything on the right-hand side of a
245 field or macro "assignment." You can also post-process comment and
246 preamble entries, though. Comment entries are essentially one big
247 string, so only whitespace collapsing makes sense on them.
248 Preambles may have multiple strings pasted together, so all the
249 string-processing options apply to them. (And there's nothing to
250 prevent you from using macros in a preamble.)
251
253 btparse, bt_input, bt_traversal
254
256 Greg Ward <gward@python.net>
257btparse, version 0.89 2023-07-21 BT_POSTPROCESS(1)