Provided by: tcllib_1.17-dfsg-1_all 
NAME
docstrip - Docstrip style source code extraction
SYNOPSIS
package require Tcl 8.4
package require docstrip ?1.2?
docstrip::extract text terminals ?option value ...?
docstrip::sourcefrom filename terminals ?option value ...?
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
DESCRIPTION
Docstrip is a tool created to support a brand of Literate Programming. It is most common
in the (La)TeX community, where it is being used for pretty much everything from the LaTeX
core and up, but there is nothing about docstrip which prevents using it for other types
of software.
In short, the basic principle of literate programming is that program source should
primarily be written and structured to suit the developers (and advanced users who want to
peek "under the hood"), not to suit the whims of a compiler or corresponding source code
consumer. This means literate sources often need some kind of "translation" to an
illiterate form that dumb software can understand. The docstrip Tcl package handles this
translation.
Even for those who do not whole-hartedly subscribe to the philosophy behind literate
programming, docstrip can bring greater clarity to in particular:
• programs employing non-obvious mathematics
• projects where separate pieces of code, perhaps in different languages, need to be
closely coordinated.
The first is by providing access to much more powerful typographical features for source
code comments than are possible in plain text. The second is because all the separate
pieces of code can be kept next to each other in the same source file.
The way it works is that the programmer edits directly only one or several "master" source
code files, from which docstrip generates the more traditional "source" files compilers or
the like would expect. The master sources typically contain a large amount of
documentation of the code, sometimes even in places where the code consumers would not
allow any comments. The etymology of "docstrip" is that this documentation was stripped
away (although "code extraction" might be a better description, as it has always been a
matter of copying selected pieces of the master source rather than deleting text from it).
The docstrip Tcl package contains a reimplementation of the basic extraction functionality
from the docstrip program, and thus makes it possible for a Tcl interpreter to read and
interpret the master source files directly.
Readers who are not previously familiar with docstrip but want to know more about it may
consult the following sources.
[1] The tclldoc package and class, http://ctan.org/tex-
archive/macros/latex/contrib/tclldoc/.
[2] The DocStrip utility, http://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/base/docstrip.dtx.
[3] The doc and shortvrb Packages, http://ctan.org/tex-
archive/macros/latex/base/doc.dtx.
[4] Chapter 14 of The LaTeX Companion (second edition), Addison-Wesley, 2004; ISBN
0-201-36299-6.
FILE FORMAT
The basic unit docstrip operates on are the lines of a master source file. Extraction
consists of selecting some of these lines to be copied from input text to output text. The
basic distinction is that between code lines (which are copied and do not begin with a
percent character) and comment lines (which begin with a percent character and are not
copied).
docstrip::extract [join {
{% comment}
{% more comment !"#$%&/(}
{some command}
{ % blah $blah "Not a comment."}
{% abc; this is comment}
{# def; this is code}
{ghi}
{% jkl}
} \n] {}
returns the same sequence of lines as
join {
{some command}
{ % blah $blah "Not a comment."}
{# def; this is code}
{ghi} ""
} \n
It does not matter to docstrip what format is used for the documentation in the comment
lines, but in order to do better than plain text comments, one typically uses some markup
language. Most commonly LaTeX is used, as that is a very established standard and also
provides the best support for mathematical formulae, but the docstrip::util package also
gives some support for doctools-like markup.
Besides the basic code and comment lines, there are also guard lines, which begin with the
two characters '%<', and meta-comment lines, which begin with the two characters ´%%'.
Within guard lines there is furthermore the distinction between verbatim guard lines,
which begin with '%<<', and ordinary guard lines, where the '%<' is not followed by
another '<'. The last category is by far the most common.
Ordinary guard lines conditions extraction of the code line(s) they guard by the value of
a boolean expression; the guarded block of code lines will only be included if the
expression evaluates to true. The syntax of an ordinary guard line is one of
'%' '<' STARSLASH EXPRESSION '>'
'%' '<' PLUSMINUS EXPRESSION '>' CODE
where
STARSLASH ::= '*' | '/'
PLUSMINUS ::= | '+' | '-'
EXPRESSION ::= SECONDARY | SECONDARY ',' EXPRESSION
| SECONDARY '|' EXPRESSION
SECONDARY ::= PRIMARY | PRIMARY '&' SECONDARY
PRIMARY ::= TERMINAL | '!' PRIMARY | '(' EXPRESSION ')'
CODE ::= { any character except end-of-line }
Comma and vertical bar both denote 'or'. Ampersand denotes 'and'. Exclamation mark
denotes 'not'. A TERMINAL can be any nonempty string of characters not containing '>',
'&', '|', comma, '(', or ')', although the docstrip manual is a bit restrictive and only
guarantees proper operation for strings of letters (although even the LaTeX core sources
make heavy use also of digits in TERMINALs). The second argument of docstrip::extract is
the list of those TERMINALs that should count as having the value 'true'; all other
TERMINALs count as being 'false' when guard expressions are evaluated.
In the case of a '%<*EXPRESSION>' guard, the lines guarded are all lines up to the next
'%</EXPRESSION>' guard with the same EXPRESSION (compared as strings). The blocks of code
delimited by such '*' and '/' guard lines must be properly nested.
set text [join {
{begin}
{%<*foo>}
{1}
{%<*bar>}
{2}
{%</bar>}
{%<*!bar>}
{3}
{%</!bar>}
{4}
{%</foo>}
{5}
{%<*bar>}
{6}
{%</bar>}
{end}
} \n]
set res [docstrip::extract $text foo]
append res [docstrip::extract $text {foo bar}]
append res [docstrip::extract $text bar]
sets $res to the result of
join {
{begin}
{1}
{3}
{4}
{5}
{end}
{begin}
{1}
{2}
{4}
{5}
{6}
{end}
{begin}
{5}
{6}
{end} ""
} \n
In guard lines without a '*', '/', '+', or '-' modifier after the ´%<', the guard applies
only to the CODE following the '>' on that single line. A '+' modifier is equivalent to no
modifier. A '-' modifier is like the case with no modifier, but the expression is
implicitly negated, i.e., the CODE of a '%<-' guard line is only included if the
expression evaluates to false.
Metacomment lines are "comment lines which should not be stripped away", but be extracted
like code lines; these are sometimes used for copyright notices and similar material. The
'%%' prefix is however not kept, but substituted by the current -metaprefix, which is
customarily set to some "comment until end of line" character (or character sequence) of
the language of the code being extracted.
set text [join {
{begin}
{%<foo> foo}
{%<+foo>plusfoo}
{%<-foo>minusfoo}
{middle}
{%% some metacomment}
{%<*foo>}
{%%another metacomment}
{%</foo>}
{end}
} \n]
set res [docstrip::extract $text foo -metaprefix {# }]
append res [docstrip::extract $text bar -metaprefix {#}]
sets $res to the result of
join {
{begin}
{ foo}
{plusfoo}
{middle}
{# some metacomment}
{# another metacomment}
{end}
{begin}
{minusfoo}
{middle}
{# some metacomment}
{end} ""
} \n
Verbatim guards can be used to force code line interpretation of a block of lines even if
some of them happen to look like any other type of lines to docstrip. A verbatim guard has
the form '%<<END-TAG' and the verbatim block is terminated by the first line that is
exactly '%END-TAG'.
set text [join {
{begin}
{%<*myblock>}
{some stupid()}
{ #computer<program>}
{%<<QQQ-98765}
{% These three lines are copied verbatim (including percents}
{%% even if -metaprefix is something different than %%).}
{%</myblock>}
{%QQQ-98765}
{ using*strange@programming<language>}
{%</myblock>}
{end}
} \n]
set res [docstrip::extract $text myblock -metaprefix {# }]
append res [docstrip::extract $text {}]
sets $res to the result of
join {
{begin}
{some stupid()}
{ #computer<program>}
{% These three lines are copied verbatim (including percents}
{%% even if -metaprefix is something different than %%).}
{%</myblock>}
{ using*strange@programming<language>}
{end}
{begin}
{end} ""
} \n
The processing of verbatim guards takes place also inside blocks of lines which due to
some outer block guard will not be copied.
The final piece of docstrip syntax is that extraction stops at a line that is exactly
"\endinput"; this is often used to avoid copying random whitespace at the end of a file.
In the unlikely case that one wants such a code line, one can protect it with a verbatim
guard.
COMMANDS
The package defines two commands.
docstrip::extract text terminals ?option value ...?
The extract command docstrips the text and returns the extracted lines of code, as
a string with each line terminated with a newline. The terminals is the list of
those guard expression terminals which should evaluate to true. The available
options are:
-annotate lines
Requests the specified number of lines of annotation to follow each
extracted line in the result. Defaults to 0. Annotation lines are mostly
useful when the extracted lines are to undergo some further transformation.
A first annotation line is a list of three elements: line type, prefix
removed in extraction, and prefix inserted in extraction. The line type is
one of: 'V' (verbatim), ´M' (metacomment), '+' (+ or no modifier guard
line), '-' (- modifier guard line), '.' (normal line). A second annotation
line is the source line number. A third annotation line is the current stack
of block guards. Requesting more than three lines of annotation is currently
not supported.
-metaprefix string
The string by which the '%%' prefix of a metacomment line will be replaced.
Defaults to '%%'. For Tcl code this would typically be '#'.
-onerror keyword
Controls what will be done when a format error in the text being processed
is detected. The settings are:
ignore Just ignore the error; continue as if nothing happened.
puts Write an error message to stderr, then continue processing.
throw Throw an error. The -errorcode is set to a list whose first element
is DOCSTRIP, second element is the type of error, and third element
is the line number where the error is detected. This is the default.
-trimlines boolean
Controls whether spaces at the end of a line should be trimmed away before
the line is processed. Defaults to true.
It should be remarked that the terminals are often called "options" in the context
of the docstrip program, since these specify which optional code fragments should
be included.
docstrip::sourcefrom filename terminals ?option value ...?
The sourcefrom command is a docstripping emulation of source. It opens the file
filename, reads it, closes it, docstrips the contents as specified by the
terminals, and evaluates the result in the local context of the caller, during
which time the info script value will be the filename. The options are passed on to
fconfigure to configure the file before its contents are read. The -metaprefix is
set to '#', all other extract options have their default values.
DOCUMENT STRUCTURE
The file format (as described above) determines whether a master source code file can be
processed correctly by docstrip, but the usefulness of the format is to no little part
also dependent on that the code and comment lines together constitute a well-formed
document.
For a document format that does not require any non-Tcl software, see the ddt2man command
in the docstrip::util package. It is suggested that files employing that document format
are given the suffix ".ddt", to distinguish them from the more traditional LaTeX-based
".dtx" files.
Master source files with ".dtx" extension are usually set up so that they can be typeset
directly by latex without any support from other files. This is achieved by beginning the
file with the lines
% \iffalse
%<*driver>
\documentclass{tclldoc}
\begin{document}
\DocInput{filename.dtx}
\end{document}
%</driver>
% \fi
or some variation thereof. The trick is that the file gets read twice. With normal LaTeX
reading rules, the first two lines are comments and therefore ignored. The third line is
the document preamble, the fourth line begins the document body, and the sixth line ends
the document, so LaTeX stops there — non-comments below that point in the file are never
subjected to the normal LaTeX reading rules. Before that, however, the \DocInput command
on the fifth line is processed, and that does two things: it changes the interpretation of
'%' from "comment" to "ignored", and it inputs the file specified in the argument (which
is normally the name of the file the command is in). It is this second time that the file
is being read that the comments and code in it are typeset.
The function of the \iffalse ... \fi is to skip lines two to seven on this second time
through; this is similar to the "if 0 { ... }" idiom for block comments in Tcl code, and
it is needed here because (amongst other things) the \documentclass command may only be
executed once. The function of the <driver> guards is to prevent this short piece of LaTeX
code from being extracted by docstrip. The total effect is that the file can function
both as a LaTeX document and as a docstrip master source code file.
It is not necessary to use the tclldoc document class, but that does provide a number of
features that are convenient for ".dtx" files containing Tcl code. More information on
this matter can be found in the references above.
SEE ALSO
docstrip_util
KEYWORDS
\.dtx, LaTeX, docstrip, documentation, literate programming, source
CATEGORY
Documentation tools
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2003–2010 Lars Hellström <Lars dot Hellstrom at residenset dot net>