Provided by: libgetdata-doc_0.10.0-3build2_all 
NAME
gd_open, gd_cbopen — open or create a Dirfile
SYNOPSIS
#include <getdata.h>
DIRFILE* gd_open(const char *dirfilename, unsigned long flags);
DIRFILE* gd_cbopen(const char *dirfilename, unsigned long flags, gd_parser_callback_t
sehandler, void *extra);
DESCRIPTION
The gd_cbopen() function opens or creates the dirfile specified by dirfilename, returning
a DIRFILE object associated with it. Opening a dirfile will cause the library to read and
parse the dirfile's format specification (see dirfile-format(5)).
If not NULL, sehandler should be a pointer to a function which will be called whenever a
syntax error is encountered during parsing the format specification. Specify NULL for
this parameter if no callback function is to be used. The caller may use this function to
correct the error or modify the error handling of the format specification parser. See
The Callback Function section below for details on this function. The extra argument
allows the caller to pass data to the callback function. The pointer will be passed to
the callback function verbatim.
The gd_open() function is equivalent to gd_cbopen(), with sehandler and extra set to NULL.
The flags argument should include one of the access modes: GD_RDONLY (read-only) or
GD_RDWR (read-write), and may also contain zero or more of the following flags, bitwise-
or'd together:
GD_ARM_ENDIAN
GD_NOT_ARM_ENDIAN
Specifies that double precision floating point raw data on disk are, or are not,
stored in the middle-endian format used by older ARM processors.
These flag only set the default endianness, and will be overridden when an /ENDIAN
directive specifies the byte sex of RAW fields, unless GD_FORCE_ENDIAN is also
specified.
On every platform, one of these flags (GD_NOT_ARM_ENDIAN on all but middle-ended
ARM systems) indicates the native behaviour of the platform. That symbol will
equal zero, and may be omitted.
GD_BIG_ENDIAN
GD_LITTLE_ENDIAN
Specifies the default byte sex of raw data stored on disk to be either big-endian
(most significant byte first) or little-endian (least significant byte first).
Omitting both flags indicates the default should be the native endianness of the
platform.
Unlike the ARM endianness flags above, neither of these symbols is ever zero.
Specifying both these flags together will cause the library to assume that the
endianness of the data is opposite to that of the native architecture, whatever
that might be.
These flag only set the default endianness, and will be overridden when an /ENDIAN
directive specifies the byte sex of RAW fields, unless GD_FORCE_ENDIAN is also
specified.
GD_CREAT
An empty dirfile will be created, if one does not already exist. This will create
both the dirfile directory and an empty format specification file called format.
If the call creates a dirfile, then the specified access mode is ignored: a newly-
created DIRFILE is always opened with access mode GD_RDWR, even if GD_RDONLY had
been specified.
The directory will have have mode S_IRWXU | S_IRWXG | S_IRWXO (0777), modified by
the caller's umask value (see umask(2)). The format file will have mode S_IRUSR |
S_IWUSR | S_IRGRP | S_IWGRP | S_IROTH | S_IWOTH (0666), also modified by the
caller's umask. The owner of the dirfile directory and format file will be the
effective user ID of the caller. Group ownership follows the rules outlined in
mkdir(2).
GD_EXCL Ensure that this call creates a dirfile: when specified along with GD_CREAT, the
call will fail if the dirfile specified by dirfilename already exists. If
GD_CREAT is not specified, this flag is ignored. This flag suffers from all the
limitations of the O_EXCL flag as indicated in open(2).
GD_FORCE_ENCODING
Specifies that /ENCODING directives (see dirfile-format(5)) found in the dirfile
format specification should be ignored. The encoding scheme specified in flags
will be used instead (see below).
GD_FORCE_ENDIAN
Specifies that /ENDIAN directives (see dirfile-format(5)) found in the dirfile
format specification should be ignored. All raw data will be assumed to have the
byte sex indicated through the presence or absence of the GD_ARM_ENDIAN,
GD_BIG_ENDIAN, GD_LITTLE_ENDIAN, and GD_NOT_ARM_ENDIAN flags.
GD_IGNORE_DUPS
If the dirfile format metadata specifies more than one field with the same name,
all but one of them will be ignored by the parser. Without this flag, parsing
would fail with the GD_E_FORMAT error, possibly resulting in invocation of the
registered callback function. Which of the duplicate fields is kept is not
specified. As a result, this flag is typically only useful in the case where
identical copies of a field specification line are present.
No indication is provided to indicate whether a duplicate field has been
discarded. If finer grained control is required, the caller should handle
GD_E_FORMAT_DUPLICATE suberrors itself with an appropriate callback function.
GD_PEDANTIC
Reject dirfiles which don't conform to the Dirfile Standards. See the Standards
Compliance section below for full details.
GD_PERMISSIVE
Allow non-compliant format specification syntax, even when given along with a
conflicting /VERSION directive. See the Standards Compliance section below for
full details.
GD_PRETTY_PRINT
When dirfile metadata are flushed to disk (either explicitly via gd_metaflush(3),
gd_rewrite_fragment(3), or gd_flush(3) or implicitly by closing the dirfile), an
attempt will be made to create a nicer looking format specification (from a human-
readable standpoint). What this explicitly means is not part of the API, and any
particular behaviour should not be relied on. If the dirfile is opened read-only,
this flag is ignored.
GD_TRUNC
If dirfilename specifies an already existing dirfile, it will be truncated before
opening. Since gd_cbopen() decides whether dirfilename specifies an existing
dirfile before attempting to parse the dirfile, dirfilename is considered to
specify an existing dirfile if it refers to a directory containing a regular file
called format, regardless of the content or form of that file.
Truncation occurs by deleting every regular file and symlink in the specified
directory, whether the files were referred to by the dirfile before truncation or
not. Accordingly, this flag should be used with caution. Unless GD_TRUNCSUB is
also specified, subdirectories are left untouched. Notably, this operation does
not consider directories used in /INCLUDE directives. If the dirfile does not
exist, this flag is ignored.
GD_TRUNCSUB
If specified along with GD_TRUNC, truncation will descend into subdirectories,
deleting all regular files and symlinks recursively. It does not descend into
directories pointed to by symbolic links: in these cases, just the symlink itself
is deleted. If specified without an accompanying GD_TRUNC, this flag is ignored.
GD_VERBOSE
Specifies that whenever an error is triggered by the library when working on this
dirfile, the corresponding error string, which can be retrieved by calling
gd_error_string(3), should be written on the caller's standard error stream
(stderr(3)) by GetData. The error string may be prefixed by a string specified by
the caller; see gd_verbose_prefix(3). Without this flag, GetData writes nothing
to standard error. (GetData never writes to standard output.)
Those flags which affect the operation of the library beyond this call itself may be
modified later using the gd_flags(3) function.
The flags argument may also be bitwise or'd with one of the following symbols indicating
the default encoding scheme of the dirfile. Like the endianness flags, the choice of
encoding here is ignored if the encoding is specified in the dirfile itself, unless
GD_FORCE_ENCODED is also specified. If none of these symbols is present, GD_AUTO_ENCODED
is assumed, unless the gd_cbopen() call results in creation or truncation of the dirfile.
In that case, GD_UNENCODED is assumed. See dirfile-encoding(5) for details on dirfile
encoding schemes.
GD_AUTO_ENCODED
Specifies that the encoding type is not known in advance, but should be detected
by the GetData library. Detection is accomplished by searching for raw data files
with extensions appropriate to the encoding scheme. This method will notably fail
if the the library is called via putdata(3) to create a previously non-existent
raw field unless a read is first successfully performed on the dirfile. Once the
library has determined the encoding scheme for the first time, it remembers it for
subsequent calls.
GD_BZIP2_ENCODED
Specifies that raw data files are compressed using the Burrows-Wheeler block
sorting text compression algorithm and Huffman coding, as implemented in the bzip2
format.
GD_FLAC_ENCODED
Specifies that raw data files are compressed using the Free Lossless Audio Coded
(FLAC).
GD_GZIP_ENCODED
Specifies that raw data files are compressed using Lempel-Ziv coding (LZ77) as
implemented in the gzip format.
GD_LZMA_ENCODED
Specifies that raw data files are compressed using the Lempel-Ziv Markov Chain
Algorithm (LZMA) as implemented in the xz container format.
GD_SLIM_ENCODED
Specifies that raw data files are compressed using the slimlib library.
GD_SIE_ENCODED
Specified that raw data files are sample-index encoded, similar to run-length
encoding, suitable for data that change rarely.
GD_TEXT_ENCODED
Specifies that raw data files are encoded as text files containing one data sample
per line.
GD_UNENCODED
Specifies that raw data files are not encoded, but written as simply binary data
to disk.
GD_ZZIP_ENCODED
Specifies that raw data files are compressed using the DEFLATE algorithm. All raw
data files for a given fragment are collected together and stored in a PKZIP
archive called raw.zip.
GD_ZZSLIM_ENCODED
Specifies that raw data files are compressed using a combinations of compression
schemes: first files are slim-compressed, as with the GD_SLIM_ENCODED scheme, and
then they are collected together and compressed (again) into a PKZIP archive
called raw.zip, as in the GD_ZZIP_ENCODED scheme.
Standards Compliance
The latest Dirfile Standards Version which this release of GetData understands is provided
in the preprocessor macro GD_DIRFILE_STANDARDS_VERSION defined in getdata.h. GetData is
able to open and parse any dirfile which conforms to this Standards Version, or to any
earlier Version. The dirfile-format(5) manual page lists the changes between Standards
Versions.
The GetData parser can operate in two modes: a permissive mode, in which much non-
Standards-compliant syntax is allowed, and a pedantic mode, in which the parser adheres
strictly to the Standards. The mode made change during the parsing of a dirfile. If
GD_PEDANTIC is passed to gd_cbopen(), the parser will start parsing the format
specification in pedantic mode, otherwise it will start in permissive mode.
Permissive mode is provided primarily to allow GetData to be used on dirfiles which
conform to no single Standard, but which were accepted by the GetData parser in previous
versions. It is notably lax regarding reserved field names, and field name characters,
the mixing of old and new data type specifiers, and generally ignores the presence of
/VERSION directives. In read-write mode, permissive mode should be used with caution, as
it can cause unintentional corruption of dirfile metadata on write, if the heuristics in
the parser incorrectly guessed the intention of non-compliant syntax. In permissive mode,
actual syntax errors are still reported as such.
In pedantic mode, the parser conforms to one specific Standards Version. This target
version may change any number of times in the course of scanning a single format
specification. If invoked using the GD_PEDANTIC flag, the parser will start in pedantic
mode with a target version equal to GD_DIRFILE_STANDARDS_VERSION. Whenever a /VERSION
directive is encountered in the format specification, the target version is changed to the
Standards Version specified. When encountering a /VERSION directive in permissive mode,
the parser will switch to pedantic mode, unless the GD_PERMISSIVE flag was passed to
gd_cbopen(), in which case no mode switch will take place.
Independent of the mode of the parser when parsing the format specification, GetData will
calculate a list of Standards Versions to which the parsed metadata conform to. The
gd_dirfile_standards(3) function can provide this information, and also specify the
desired Standards Version for writing format metadata back to disk.
The Callback Function
The caller-supplied sehandler function is called whenever the format specification parser
encounters a syntax error (i.e. whenever it would return the GD_E_FORMAT error). This
callback may be used to correct the error, or to tell the parser how to recover from it.
This function should take two pointers as arguments, and return an int:
int sehandler(gd_parser_data_t *pdata, void *extra);
The extra parameter is the pointer supplied to gd_cbopen(), passed verbatim to this
function. It can be used to pass caller data to the callback. GetData does not inspect
this pointer, not even to check its validity. If the caller needs to pass no data to the
callback, it may be NULL.
The gd_parser_data_t type is a structure with at least the following members:
typedef struct {
const DIRFILE* dirfile;
int suberror;
int linenum;
const char* filename;
char* line;
size_t buflen;
...
} gd_parser_data_t;
The pdata->dirfile member will be a pointer to a DIRFILE object suitable only for passing
to gd_error_string(). Notably, the caller should not assume this pointer will be the same
as the pointer eventually returned by gd_cbopen(), nor that it will be valid after the
callback function returns.
The pdata->suberror parameter will be one of the following symbols indicating the type of
syntax error encountered:
GD_E_FORMAT_ALIAS
The parent specified for a meta field was an alias.
GD_E_FORMAT_BAD_LINE
The line was indecipherable. Typically this means that the line contained neither
a reserved word, nor a field type.
GD_E_FORMAT_BAD_NAME
The specified field name was invalid.
GD_E_FORMAT_BAD_SPF
The samples-per-frame of a RAW field was out-of-range.
GD_E_FORMAT_BAD_TYPE
The data type of a RAW field was unrecognised.
GD_E_FORMAT_BITNUM
The first bit of a BIT field was out-of-range.
GD_E_FORMAT_BITSIZE
The last bit of a BIT field was out-of-range.
GD_E_FORMAT_CHARACTER
An invalid character was found in the line, or a character escape sequence was
malformed.
GD_E_FORMAT_DUPLICATE
The specified field name already exists.
GD_E_FORMAT_ENDIAN
The byte sex specified by an /ENDIAN directive was unrecognised.
GD_E_FORMAT_LITERAL
An unexpected character was encountered in a complex literal.
GD_E_FORMAT_LOCATION
The parent of a metafield was defined in another fragment.
GD_E_FORMAT_META_META
An attempt was made to use a metafield as the parent to a new metafield.
GD_E_FORMAT_METARAW
An attempt was made to add a RAW metafield.
GD_E_FORMAT_MPLEXVAL
A MPLEX specification has a negative period.
GD_E_FORMAT_N_FIELDS
The number of fields of a LINCOM field was out-of-range.
GD_E_FORMAT_N_TOK
An insufficient number of tokens was found on the line.
GD_E_FORMAT_NO_FIELD
The parent of a metafield was not found.
GD_E_FORMAT_NUMBITS
The number of bits of a BIT field was out-of-range.
GD_E_FORMAT_PROTECT
The protection level specified by a /PROTECT directive was unrecognised.
GD_E_FORMAT_RES_NAME
A field was specified with the reserved name INDEX (or with the reserved name
FILEFRAM in a dirfile conforming to Standards Version 5 or earlier).
GD_E_FORMAT_UNTERM
The last token of the line was unterminated.
GD_E_FORMAT_WINDOP
The operation in a WINDOW field was not recognised.
pdata->filename and pdata->linenum members contains the pathname of the fragment and line
number where the syntax error was encountered. The first line in a fragment is line one.
The pdata->line member contains a copy of the line containing the syntax error. This line
may be freely modified by the callback function. It will then be reparsed if the callback
function returns the symbol GD_SYNTAX_RESCAN (see below). The size of the memory buffer,
which may be greater than the length of the actual string, is provided in pdata->buflen,
and space is available for at least GD_MAX_LINE_LENGTH bytes.
If the callback function returns GD_SYNTAX_RESCAN, then a different buffer, which may be
larger, may be used to hold the new string, by assigning a pointer to the new buffer to
pdata->line. This buffer will be deallocated by the library using the free function
specified through gd_alloc_funcs(3), or else free(3) by default. Do not deallocate the
original buffer passed to the callback through pdata->line: it, too, will be deallocated
by the library.
The callback function should return one of the following symbols, which tells the parser
how to subsequently handle the error:
GD_SYNTAX_ABORT
The parser should immediately abort parsing the format specification and fail with
the error GD_E_FORMAT. This is the default behaviour, if no callback function is
provided (or if the parser is invoked by calling gd_open()).
GD_SYNTAX_CONTINUE
The parser should continue parsing the format specification. However, once
parsing has finished, the parser will fail with the error GD_E_FORMAT, even if no
further syntax errors are encountered. This behaviour may be used by the caller
to identify all lines containing syntax errors in the format specification,
instead of just the first one.
GD_SYNTAX_IGNORE
The parser should ignore the line containing the syntax error completely, and
carry on parsing the format specification. If no further errors are encountered,
the dirfile will be successfully opened.
GD_SYNTAX_RESCAN
The parser should rescan the line argument, which replaces the line which
originally contained the syntax error. The line is assumed to have been corrected
by the callback function. If the line still contains a syntax error, the callback
function will be called again.
Note: the line is not corrected on disk; however, the caller may subsequently
correct the fragment on disk by calling gd_rewrite_fragment(3).
The callback function handles only syntax errors. The parser may still abort early, if a
different kind of library error is encountered. Furthermore, although a line may contain
more than one syntax error, the parser will only ever report one syntax error per line,
even if the callback function returns GD_SYNTAX_CONTINUE.
RETURN VALUE
A call to gd_cbopen() or gd_open() always returns a pointer to a newly allocated DIRFILE
object, except in instances when it is unable to allocate memory for the DIRFILE object
itself, in which case it will return NULL. The DIRFILE object is an opaque structure
containing the parsed dirfile metadata.
If an error occurred, these functions will store a negative-valued error code in the
returned DIRFILE, which may be retrieved by a subsequent call to gd_error(3). Possible
error codes are:
GD_E_ACCMODE
The library was asked to truncate a dirfile opened read-only (i.e. GD_TRUNC was
specified in flags along with GD_RDONLY).
GD_E_ALLOC
The library was unable to allocate memory.
GD_E_BAD_REFERENCE
The reference field specified by a /REFERENCE directive in the format
specification (see dirfile-format(5)) was not found, or was not a RAW field.
GD_E_CALLBACK
The registered callback function, sehandler, returned an unrecognised response.
GD_E_CREAT
The library was unable to create the dirfile.
GD_E_EXISTS
The dirfile already exists and both GD_CREAT and GD_EXCL were specified.
GD_E_FORMAT
A syntax error occurred in the format specification. See also The Callback
Function section above.
GD_E_IO The dirfile format file, or another file that it includes, could not be read, or
dirfilename does not specify a valid dirfile.
GD_E_LINE_TOO_LONG
The parser encountered a line in the format specification longer than it was able
to deal with. Lines are limited by the storage size of ssize_t. On 32-bit
systems, this limits format specification lines to 2**31 bytes. The limit is
larger on 64-bit systems.
A DIRFILE which is returned from a failed open is flagged as invalid, meaning most
functions it is passed to will faill with the error GD_E_BAD_DIRFILE. A descriptive error
string for the error may be obtained by calling gd_error_string(3).
When no longer needed, the caller should de-allocate any returned DIRFILE object by
calling gd_close(3), or gd_discard(3), even if the open failed.
BUGS
When working with dirfiles conforming to Standards Versions 4 and earlier (before the
introduction of the /ENDIAN directive), GetData assumes the dirfile has native byte sex,
even though, officially, these early Standards stipulated data to be little-endian. This
is necessary since, in the absence of an explicit /VERSION directive, it is often
impossible to determine the intended Standards Version of a dirfile, and the current
behaviour is to assume native byte sex for modern dirfiles lacking /ENDIAN. To read an
old, little-ended dirfile on a big-ended platform, an /ENDIAN directive should be added to
the format specification, or else GD_LITTLE_ENDIAN should be specified by the caller.
GetData's parser assumes it is running on an ASCII-compatible platform. Format
specification parsing will fail gloriously on an EBCDIC platform.
HISTORY
The dirfile_open() function appeared in GetData-0.3.0. The only supported flags were
GD_BIG_ENDIAN, GD_CREAT, GD_EXCL, GD_FORCE_ENDIAN, GD_LITTLE_ENDIAN, GD_PEDANTIC,
GD_RDONLY, GD_RDWR, and GD_TRUNC.
The GD_AUTO_ENCODED, GD_FORCE_ENCODING, GD_SLIM_ENCODED, GD_TEXT_ENCODED, GD_UNECODED, and
GD_VERBOSE flags appeared in GetData-0.4.0.
The dirfile_cbopen() function and the GD_BZIP2_ENCODED, GD_GZIP_ENCODED, and
GD_IGNORE_DUPS flags appeared in GetData-0.5.0.
The GD_PRETTY_PRINT and GD_LZMA_ENCODED flags appeared in GetData-0.6.0.
In GetData-0.7.0 these functions were renamed to gd_open() and gd_cbopen(). The
GD_ARM_ENDIAN, GD_NOT_ARM_ENDIAN, and GD_PERMISSIVE flags also appeared in this release.
The GD_SIE_ENCODED, GD_TRUNCSUB, GD_ZZIP_ENCODED, and GD_ZZSLIM_ENCODED flags appeared in
GetData-0.8.0.
The GD_FLAC_ENCODED flag appeared in GetData-0.9.0.
SEE ALSO
gd_alloc_funcs(3), gd_close(3), gd_dirfile_standards(3), gd_discard(3), gd_error(3),
gd_error_string(3), gd_flags(3), gd_getdata(3), gd_include(3), gd_parser_callback(3),
gd_verbose_prefix(3), dirfile(5), dirfile-encoding(5), dirfile-format(5)