Re: [Groff] Re: query w.r.t. references follow-up

[Dean Allen Provins]

Ted:

Thanks for the reply.  Its unfortunate that no sort routine exists.  I
may write one (after I get the HOWTO done) using your outline below.

In the mean time, I'll get by with what I have.

Regards,

Dean Provins
Calgary
----------------------------------
> On 18-Jan-00 Dean Allen Provins wrote:
> > 
> > What I really want is a sorted list of my text database(s).  Sort key
> > should be by authors, and/or date of publication.
> > 
> > Does anyone have some code to do this?
> 
> Hi Dean,
> 
> groff itself does not have a utility for this. Other UNIX installations
> of troff may have a program called sortbib which does just that, for
> refer databases.
> 
> You might try 'lookbib' on a database which has been indexed with
> 'indxbib' and seeing if you can get this to work for you; but
> I don't hold out much hope.
> 
> There may be some other UNIX utilities available on some installation
> for processing files with this kind of structure (it is generic,
> not just a 'refer' format).
> 
> If you want a sorted formatted printout, then of course refer can
> do this on its own. However, I infer that you want to re-structure
> the database files themselves so that they are in sorted order
> internally.
> 
> If push comes to shove, as they say, you could do it with a couple
> of awk scripts.
> 
> The _strategy_ (the _details_ are finicky) is as follows.
> 
> The first awk script treats the database as a series of multiline
> records separated by blank lines; each line has an identifying tag.
> It uses a specially defined function to extract lines (now "fields")
> with given tags, and compose a sort key out of these. It then prints
> out a file, each line of which is made up of the one-line concatenation
> of the original lines in the database record following after the
> constructed sort key.
> 
> This file is then piped to the UNIX sort command, which produces
> a file with the lines in sorted order.
> 
> Then the second awk script is applied to this file, which unpacks
> the original database lines from the lines in this file, discarding
> the sort key. The result is a reconstruction of the original
> database, but with the records in a suitably sorted order.
> 
> A tersely described example of how to do this can be found in the book
> "The AWK programming language" by Aho, Kernighan and Weinberger
> (Addison-Wesley 1988), in Section 3.4 (Multiline Records)
> sub-section "Name-Value Data", pp 86-88 in my copy).
> 
> (There is a more recent book, "GAWK: The GNU Awk User's Guide"
> by Arnold D. Robbins, Free Software Foundation 1989ff), which also gives
> an introduction to multiline records, but does not give sufficient
> detail to define a complete solution to the problem. Nor does it
> have the clarity of the other).
> 
> I hope this helps.
> Ted.
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
> Date: 18-Jan-00                                       Time: 18:45:10
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