NAME

Text::BibTeX::Structure - check/enforce database structure in BibTeX entries

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

Text::BibTeX::Structure takes care of checking that BibTeX entries adhere to some pre-specified database structure, and optionally coercing them into compliance with that structure. It does this by maintaining, for a given database structure, the list of allowed entry types, and required and optional fields for each of the entry types.

For example, the `bibliography' structure -- an extension of the structure implicit in the original BibTeX's standard style files -- includes entry types such as article, book, and inproceedings; the required fields for article-type entries are author, title, journal, and year, and the optional fields are volume, number, pages, month, and note. (Complete details of the `bibliography' structure will be documented elsewhere. Likewise, the method for creating new database structures will be documented elsewhere. Neither of these documents yet exist, so don't bother looking for them.)

Users can create new database structures using an as-yet-unspecified definition file. This allows the database structure to be defined explicitly and independently of the output format (`style file'), in contrast to the original BibTeX.

DETAILS

Traditional subroutines

find_structure (STRUCT)

Searches the space of known database structures for the one named by STRUCT. (STRUCT might itself be a description of a database structure, in which case it is returned without further processing.)

Currently the only known database structure is `bibliography'; eventually this will be extended to search a user-extendible collection of on-line structure definitions.

Methods of Text::BibTeX::Structure class

dump

Dumps a structure definition. Format is suspiciously similar to that used to describe the BibTeX structure in A Guide to LaTeX2e, Appendix B. Probably also quite similar to what I'll require the input file to look like.

NAME is the name of the structure; it must be supplied. STRUCTURE is a complete structure definition, as returned by the mythical read_structure; if it is not supplied, then the structure associated with NAME is looked up in the global list of known structures. Croaks if this lookup fails.

read FILE

Reads a structure definition from a file. No clue how it'll work yet.

known_type

required_fields

optional_fields

Methods of Text::BibTeX::Entry class

check_type

check_required_fields

check_optional_fields

check

coerce

silently_corce