NAME

Text::BibTeX::File - interface to whole BibTeX files

SYNOPSIS

use Text::BibTeX::File;

$bib = Text::BibTeX::File->new("foo.bib") or die "foo.bib: $!\n";
# or:
$bib = new Text::BibTeX::File;
$bib->open("foo.bib", {binmode => 'utf-8'}) || die "foo.bib: $!\n";

$bib->set_structure ($structure_name,
                     $option1 => $value1, ...);

$at_eof = $bib->eof;

$bib->close;

DESCRIPTION

Text::BibTeX::File provides an object-oriented interface to BibTeX files. Its most obvious purpose is to keep track of a filename and filehandle together for use by the Text::BibTeX::Entry module (which is much more interesting). In addition, it allows you to specify certain options which are applicable to a whole database (file), rather than having to specify them for each entry in the file. Currently, you can specify the database structure and some structure options. These concepts are fully documented in Text::BibTeX::Structure.

METHODS

Object creation, file operations

new ([FILENAME], [OPTS])

Creates a new Text::BibTeX::File object. If FILENAME is supplied, passes it to the open method (along with OPTS). If the open fails, new fails and returns false; if the open succeeds (or if FILENAME isn't supplied), new returns the new object reference.

open (FILENAME [OPTS])

Opens the file specified by FILENAME. OPTS is an hashref that can have the following values:

MODE

mode as specified by IO::File

PERMS

permissions as specified by IO::File. Can only be used in conjunction with MODE

BINMODE

by default, Text::BibTeX uses bytes directly. Thus, you need to encode strings accordingly with the encoding of the files you are reading. You can also select UTF-8. In this case, Text::BibTeX will return UTF-8 strings in NFC mode. Note that at the moment files with BOM are not supported.

Valid values are 'raw/bytes' or 'utf-8'.

close ()

Closes the filehandle associated with the object. If there is no such filehandle (i.e., open was never called on the object), does nothing.

eof ()

Returns the end-of-file state of the filehandle associated with the object: a true value means we are at the end of the file.

Object properties

set_structure (STRUCTURE [, OPTION => VALUE, ...])

Sets the database structure for a BibTeX file. At the simplest level, this means that entries from the file are expected to conform to certain field requirements as specified by the structure module. It also gives you full access to the methods of the particular structured entry class for this structure, allowing you to perform operations specific to this kind of database. See "CLASS INTERACTIONS" in Text::BibTeX::Structure for all the consequences of setting the database structure for a Text::BibTeX::File object.

structure ()

Returns the name of the database structure associated with the object (as set by set_structure).

preserve_values ([PRESERVE])

Sets the "preserve values" flag, to control all future parsing of entries from this file. If PRESERVE isn't supplied, returns the current state of the flag. See Text::BibTeX::Value for details on parsing in "value preservation" mode.

SEE ALSO

Text::BibTeX, Text::BibTeX::Entry, Text::BibTeX::Structure

AUTHOR

Greg Ward <gward@python.net>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1997-2000 by Gregory P. Ward. All rights reserved. This file is part of the Text::BibTeX library. This library is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.