specs - A string formatting utility modeled off VM/CMS Pipeline's specs stage

What's currently working

• Basic parsing of specs parameters

  • inputspec *STRIP *CONVERSION outputspec *PLACEMENT

• input specifications:

  • delimited string literals. e.g. /abc def/ -or- ,xyzzy plugh,
  • numerical ranges
    • mm-nn mm-*
    • mm.len mm.*
    • nn
  • word ranges (WORD can be abbreviated)
    • WORDm-n WORDm-*
    • WORDn

• output specifications:

  • '.' - skip output
  • numerical position
    • mm-nn mm-*
    • mm.len mm.*
    • mm
  • NEXT
    • NEXT.len NEXT.*
  • NEXTWORD
    • NEXTWORD.len

Example

      specs '1-8 1 /some string/ nw 9-* nw'
      input:  123456789abcd
      output: 12345678 some string  9abcd

TODOs

The long term goal is to implement as many features as practical from the VM/CMS's specs stage.

There are a lot of missing features and partially implemented features.

There are stubs for:

• *STRIP
• *CONVERSION
• *PLACEMENT
• Fields