Article 13276 of comp.lang.perl:

Article 13276 of comp.lang.perl:
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From: [email protected] (Daniel L Smith)
Subject: abex - abbrev. expander for HTML docs and more
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Organization: Vivid Software
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 1994 18:48:41 GMT
Lines: 173

Ever type long paths in HTML over and over and...

Ever want to write an HTML template, and have it do different
things on different servers, or be able to update the resulting HTML
easily? Perhaps from crontab?

I like the current crop of HTML editors (I tend to use the emacs
mode for it), but I don't like to commit to every last filename and so on
when trying to sketch out a page - I'd rather get the template down and then
expand it into HTML. I wrote a simple perl script to expand abbreviations.
The abbreviations appear in your template like this one: ~WWW~, and are
expanded according to how you set up abbreviations in a separate file.
This script is intended to address 90% of the problem with 10% of the work.
I'm open to lots of improvements, but I don't intend it to be some
heavy duty macro facility or anything like that.

Below is "abex". Say "nroff -man abex | $PAGER" for an example.

Have fun,

Daniel

#! /usr/local/bin/perl
'di';
'ig00';
#
# $Header$
#
# $Log$
#
# abex - abbreviation expander 1.0
#
# Daniel Smith ([email protected]), April 29, 1994

# default delimiter
$delimiter = '~';
$DEBUG = 0; # set to 1 to see associative array

if ($#ARGV != 1) {
print "usage: abex abbrev_file file_to_expand\n";
exit 0;
}

open (MACRO_FILE, "< $ARGV[0]") || die "can't open macro file\n";

# gather abbrevs and what they expand to
while (<MACRO_FILE>) {
chop;
# our comments are '#'
if (/^#/) {
next;
}
($abbrev, $expand) = split('\t');
$all_abbrevs{$abbrev} = $expand;
}

$ev_str = "while (<REPLACE_FILE>) {\n";

foreach (keys %all_abbrevs) {
$ev_str .= "\ts!$delimiter$_$delimiter!$all_abbrevs{$_}!g;\n";
}
$ev_str .= "\tprint;\n";
$ev_str .= "}\n";

$DEBUG && print "
our string is
$ev_str
";

open (REPLACE_FILE, "< $ARGV[1]") || die "can't open source file\n";
eval $ev_str;

###############################################################

# These next few lines are legal in both Perl and nroff.

00; # finish .ig

'di \" finish diversion--previous line must be blank
nr nl 0-1 \" fake up transition to first page again
nr % 0 \" start at page 1
'; __END__ ##### From here on it's a standard manual page #####

TH ABEX 1 "April 29, 1994"
AT 3
SH NAME
abex \- abbreviation expander
SH SYNOPSIS
B abex abbreviation_file template
SH DESCRIPTION
I Abex
expands template files after reading an abbrevation file. It
can be used for writing HTML templates and much more. Abbreviations
in the template are delimited by the tilde '~' character. The
expansion goes to standard output. Abex is well suited for updating
documents from crontab (can change abbreviation files, etc.).
SH ABBREVIATION FILE FORMAT
nf

A sample abbreviation file:

# abbreviation file
#
# format is <abbreviation><tab><expansion>
#
WAIS Wide Area Information Server
WWW World Wide Web
WWWW World Wide Web Worm
SGML Standard Generalized Markup Language
RTF Rich Text Format
#
as <A
ae </A>
#
# href start, href end
#
hs HREF="http://some_host/
he ">
#
bs <BODY>
be </BODY>
#
mle This is\\na multiple\\nline\\nexample
SH SAMPLE TEMPLATE
Here is a sample. Note that while the abbreviations here are intended to be
constant, the output you get is entirely up to which abbreviation file
you feed into Abex.
nf

~bs~
this is a test for ~WWW~
Here is a ~as~ ~hs~some/file/path~he~ reference~ae~
This should be a multiple line example (but not in ~RTF~).
~mle~
~be~

The result is:

<BODY>
this is a test for World Wide Web
Here is a <A HREF="http://some_host/some/file/path"> reference</A>
This should be a multiple line example (but not in Rich Text Format).
This is
a multiple
line
example
</BODY>

SH ENVIRONMENT
No environment variables are used.
SH FILES
None.
SH AUTHOR
Daniel L. Smith ([email protected], [email protected]), POB 613,
Sausalito, CA, 94966
SH DIAGNOSTICS
Set $DEBUG to 1 to see the string that gets built up from the abbreviation
file.
SH BUGS
Don't use the character '!' in an abbreviation or an expansion. Perhaps
'^' would be better?

--
[email protected] [email protected]
Daniel L Smith, P.O.B. 613, Sausalito, 94966, California