/ 
File-Comments-0.08
River stage zero No dependents
/ File::Comments

NAME

File::Comments - Recognizes file formats and extracts format-specific comments

SYNOPSIS

use File::Comments;

my $snoop = File::Comments->new();

    # *----------------
    # | program.c:
    # | /* comment */
    # | main () {}
    # *----------------
my $comments = $snoop->comments("program.c");
    # => [" comment "]

    # *----------------
    # | script.pl:
    # | # comment
    # | print "howdy!\n"; # another comment
    # *----------------
my $comments = $snoop->comments("script.pl");
    # => [" comment", " another comment"]

    # or strip comments from a file:
my $stripped = $snoop->stripped("script.pl");
    # => "print "howdy!\n";"

    # or just guess a file's type:
my $type = $snoop->guess_type("program.c");    
    # => "c"

DESCRIPTION

File::Comments guesses the type of a given file, determines the format used for comments, extracts all comments, and returns them as a reference to an array of chunks. Alternatively, it strips all comments from a file.

Currently supported are Perl scripts, C/C++ programs, Java, makefiles, JavaScript, Python and PHP.

The plugin architecture used by File::Comments makes it easy to add new formats. To support a new format, a new plugin module has to be installed. No modifications to the File::Comments codebase are necessary, new plugins will be picked up automatically.

File::Comments can also be used to simply guess a file's type. It it somewhat more flexible than File::MMagic and File::Type. File types in File::Comments are typically based on file name suffixes (*.c, *.pl, etc.). If no suffix is available, or a given suffix is ambiguous (e.g. if several plugins have registered a handler for the same suffix), then the file's content is used to narrow down the possibilities and arrive at a decision.

WARNING: THIS MODULE IS UNDER DEVELOPMENT, QUALITY IS ALPHA. IF YOU FIND BUGS, OR WANT TO CONTRIBUTE PLUGINS, PLEASE SEND THEM MY WAY.

FILE TYPES

Currently, the following plugins are included in the File::Comments distribution:

###############################################
# plugin                              type    #
###############################################
  File::Comments::Plugin::C          c            (o)
  File::Comments::Plugin::Makefile   makefile  (X)
  File::Comments::Plugin::Perl       perl      (X)
  File::Comments::Plugin::JavaScript js           (o)
  File::Comments::Plugin::Java       java         (o)
  File::Comments::Plugin::HTML       html      (X)
  File::Comments::Plugin::Python     python       (o)
  File::Comments::Plugin::PHP        php          (o)

      (X) Fully implemented
      (o) Implemented with regular expressions, only works for
          easy cases until real parsers are employed.

The constants listed in the type column are the strings returned by the guess_type() method.

Methods

$snoop = File::Comments->new()

Create a new comment extractor engine. This will automatically initialize all plugins.

To avoid cold calls ("Cold Calls"), set cold_calls to a false value (defaults to 1):

$snoop = File::Comments->new( cold_calls => 0 );

By default, if no plugin can be found for a given file, File::Comments will throw a fatal error and die(). If this is undesirable and a default plugin should be used instead, it can be specified in the constructor using the default_plugin parameter:

$snoop = File::Comments->new( 
  default_plugin => "File::Comments::Plugin::Makefile"
);
$comments = $snoop->comments("program.c");

Extract all comments from a file. After determining the file type by either suffix or content ("Cold Calls"), comments are extracted as chunks and returned as a reference to an array.

To get a single string containing all comments, just join the chunks:

my $comments_string = join '', @$comments;
$stripped_text = $snoop->stripped("program.c");

Strip all comments from a file. After determining the file type by either suffix or content ("Cold Calls"), all comments are removed and the stripped text is returned in a scalar.

$type = $snoop->guess_type("script.pl")

Guess the type of a file, based on either suffix, or in absense of a suffix via "Cold Calls". Return the result as a string: "c", "makefile", "perl", etc. ("FILE TYPES").

$snoop->suffix_registered("c")

Returns true if one of the plugins has registered the given suffix.

Writing new plugins

Writing a new plugin to add functionality to the File::Comments framework is as simple as defining a new module, derived from the baseclass of all plugins, File::Comments::Plugin. Three additional methods are needed: init(), type(), and comments().

init() gets called when the mothership finds the plugin and initializes it. This is the time to register extensions that the plugin wants to handle.

The second mandatory method for a plugin is type(), which returns a string, indicating the type of the file examined. Usually this can be done without further ado, since a basic plugin will called only on files which it registered for by suffix. Exceptions to this are explained later.

The third method is comments(), which returns a reference to an array of comment lines. The content of the source file to be examined will be available in

$self->{target}->{content}

by the time comments() gets called.

And that's it. Here's a functional basic plugin, registering a new suffix ".odd" with the mothership and expecting files with comment lines that start with ODDCOMMENT:

###########################################
package File::Comments::Plugin::Oddball;
###########################################

use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Comments::Plugin;

our $VERSION = "0.01";
our @ISA     = qw(File::Comments::Plugin);

###########################################
sub init {
###########################################
    my($self) = @_;

    $self->register_suffix(".odd");
}

###########################################
sub type {
###########################################
    my($self) = @_;

    return "odd";
}

###########################################
sub comments {
###########################################
    my($self) = @_;

    # Some code to extract all comments from 
    # $self->{target}->{content}:
    my @comments = ($self->{target}->{content} =~ /^ODDCOMMENT:(.*)/);
    return \@comments;
}

1;

Cold Calls

If a file doesn't have an extension or an extensions that's served by multiple plugins, File::Comments will go shop around and ask all plugins if they want to handle the file. The mothership calls each plugin's applicable() method, passing it an object of type File::Comments::Target, which contains the following fields:

When the plugin gets such a cold call (indicated by the third parameter to applicable(), it can either accept or deny the request. To arrive at a decision, it can peek into the target object. The Perl plugin illustrates this:

###########################################
sub applicable {
###########################################
    my($self, $target, $cold_call) = @_;

    return 1 unless $cold_call;

    return 1 if $target->{content} =~ /^#!.*perl\b/;

    return 0;
}

If a plugin does not define a applicable() method, a default method is inherited from the base class File::Comments::Plugin, which looks like this:

###########################################
sub applicable {
###########################################
    my($self, $target, $cold_call) = @_;

    return 0 if $cold_call;
    return 1;
}

This will deny all cold calls and only accept requests for files with suffixes or base names the plugin has already signed up for.

Plugin Inheritance

Plugins can reuse existing plugins by inheritance. For example, if you wanted to write a catch-all plugin that takes over all cold calls and handles comments like the Makefile plugin, you can simply use

###########################################
package File::Comments::Plugin::Catchall;
###########################################

use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Comments::Plugin;
use File::Comments::Plugin::Makefile;

our $VERSION = "0.01";
our @ISA     = qw(File::Comments::Plugin::Makefile);

###########################################
sub applicable {
###########################################
    my($self) = @_;

    return 1;
}

File::Comments::Plugin::Catchall just implements applicable() and inherits everything else from File::Comments::Plugin::Makefile.

LEGALESE

Copyright 2005 by Mike Schilli, all rights reserved. This program is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR

2005, Mike Schilli <cpan@perlmeister.com>