Hello, I have uploaded the patch EscapeAndOther, #375. The patch is based on pdftex-1.30.0-rc1. It supersedes patch EscapeDivers.tar.bz2, #371. Inherited from patch EscapeDivers: Expandable: \pdfstrcmp, \pdfescapestring, \pdfescapename Added: \pdfescapehex, \pdfunescapehex Fix: \pdfescapename: '%' is also a delimiter that needs escaping. New in patch EscapeAndOther: * \pdfcreationdate * \pdffilemoddate * \pdffilesize * \pdfmdfivesum * \pdffiledump * \pdfshellescape * \pdfmatch and \pdflastmatch * Start with bug fix: quotes are legal in other operating systems than windows. Syntax: %% expandable commands: \pdfstrcmp <general text> <general text> \pdfescapestring <general text> \pdfescapename <general text> \pdfescapehex <general text> \pdfunescapehex <general text> \pdfcreationdate \pdffilemoddate <general text> \pdffilesize <general text> \pdfmdfivesum <file spec> | <general text> \pdfmatch <match options> <general text> <general text> <match options> := [icase] [subcount <number>] \pdflastmatch <number> %% read-only integers \pdfshellescape Common for the following primitives: * The result string is given by characters with catcode "other" (12), only the space has catcode "space" (10). The commands follow the tradition of \meaning, \string, ... * The argument <general text> is expanded before use. It follows the tradition of \special, \message, \pdfobj, ... Description: \pdfstrcmp{<a>}{<b>} Compares two strings and returns the strings "0" if <a> equals <b> "-1" if <a> is less than <b> "1" if <a> is greater than <b> Use example: \ifcase\pdfstrcmp{abc}{def}\relax \message{abc = def} \or \message{abc > def} \else \message{abc < def} \fi Alternative: Implementing as read-only integer, then the use in \ifcase, \ifnum, ... is more save: \ifcase\pdfstrcmp{xyz}{abc}1\or 2\else 3\fi expands to 3, as read-only integer it expands to the expected 2. \pdfescapestring{<a>} Escapes the string <a> that it can be used as PDF string. '(', ')', '\' are escaped along with the control and 8-bit characters. Use example: \pdfinfo{/Title (\pdfescapestring{...})} \special{ps: [ /Title (\pdfescapestring{...}) /DOCINFO pdfmark} Alternative: Perhaps 8-bit characters don't need escaping. Whitespace, especially newlines should be escaped, because of the use for latex/dvips to avoid recoding problems (<LF> -> <CR><LF>). \pdfescapename{<a>} Escapes the string <a> that it can be used as PDF string. Whitespace, delimiters, '#' are escaped along with the control and 8-bit characters, recommended by the spec. Use example: \pdfobj stream attr{/Type/EmbeddedFile% /Subtype/\pdfescapename{text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1}% ... } file {...} \pdfescapehex{<a>}, \pdfunescapehex{<b>} String <a> is converted to uppercase hexadecimal representation, <b> is converted back. Use example: \pdfescapehex{Hello} is converted to 48656C6C6F \pdfinfo{/Title <\pdfescapehex{Hello}>} Also it can be used to write strings in auxiliary files and later reread without worrying about catcodes, unmached curly braces. \pdfcreationdate It expands to the date string that pdfTeX uses in the info dict as default. Rationale: * It provides seconds and especially the time zone. * Setting of /M date for annotations. * Because of the complicate change file structure of the sources it is not easy to synchronize the creation date with \year, \month, \day and \time. Thus \pdfcreationdate can be used to set these registers to the same values. Example: \pdfcreationdate expands to D:20050625015605+02'00' \pdfannot ...{/Subtype /FileAttachment \M (\pdfcreationdate) ...} \pdffilemoddate{<file>} It expands to the modification date of <file> in the same format as \pdfcreationdate (PDF date format). On error it returns the empty string. Rationale: * File embedding: the date is shown in the attachment tab. * "Make feature": files can be compared, it can be checked, which file is newer. Example: pdfTeX does not support EPS files, epstopdf.sty converts them to PDF either always or, if the PDF variants do not exists. Both ways are not satifactory, either the time penalty is large or pdf files are embedded that are out of date. \pdffilemoddate solves this problem. Error handling, see \pdffilesize I don't have implemented a \pdfcreationdate because of portability issue: The "ctime" field of struct "stat" is interpreted differently among operating systems: * creation date, e.g. win * inode change time, e.g. unix \pdffilesize{<file>} It expands to the size of <file> as string. On error it returns the empty string. Rationale: * File embedding: the size is shown in the attachment tab. * Sometimes it is useful to know if a file has size "0" (failed conversions, ...). Error handling: Currently the empty string is silently returned. Alternatives: * Stop with error message. But what can the user do? Error recovery is easy: no information available, thus return nothing. * Warning message. But the primitives could be used for checks on file existence. * Return status in \pdfretval. I doubt a little whether this is really necessary. It is very easy to implement. But the documentation grows by a large list of error codes with its problems: Much to explain to the users. How they are assigned? \pdfmdfivesum{<abc>} or \pdfmdfivesum file {<file>} It calculates the md5 sum and converts it to uppercase hexadecimal format (same as \pdfescapehex). The syntax is a simplified \pdfobj: Either the data is given directly or in a file. Rationale: * File embedding: providing /CheckSum. * Also the md5 sums of auxiliary files could be stored and compared in order to display a rerun warning. (Of course, it can be possible that different files have the same checksum, but the same file does not have different checksums.) \pdfshellescape It is a read-only integer that is 1 if \write18 is enabled, 0 otherwise. Rationale: * It thought that \ifeof18 with \pdftexversion to implement a safe test for the \write18 feature. But I had to learn that I was wrong, see thread in comp.text.tex: "Confused about pstricks and pdftricks": mikTeX's pdfTeX does not implement \ifeof18. For implementing the test, only a obscure way via \pdftexbanner remains, but this way is not very reliable, the contents of \pdftexbanner is not well defined, it could be anything. Quotes in file names: * File name handling is quite chaotic. Quotes are removed by the scanner for \input, \open*. This behaviour is schizophrene: to solve a problem with spaces, quotes are now forbidden. * Inconsistencies: The syntax of \pdfobj and \pdfximage would allow any file name, but \pdfobj removes quotes, only \pdfximage uses the more intelligent way, it removes quotes for windows only. Thus the patch fixes: * append_to_name (used in pack_file_name): quotes are removed for windows only. This fixes \pdfobj. * utils.c: new function "makecfilename", used by \pdfximage (readimage), \pdffilesize, ... \pdfmatch [icase] [subcount <number>}] {<pattern>}{<string>} Implements pattern matching using the POSIX regex (a standard library at least in my linux). It returns the same values as \pdfstrcmp, but with the following semantics: -1: error case (invalid pattern, ...) 0: no match 1: match found Options: * icase: case insensitive matching * subcount: it sets the table size for found subpatterns. A number "-1" resets the table size to the start default. See the manual page regex.3 and regex.7. The implementation shows a possible interface to pattern matching in TeX. Therefore only the basics is implemented. Flags: * REG_EXTENDED is set in the implementation. * REG_ICASE: can be set by user. * other: not implemented. \pdflastmatch <number> The result of \pdfmatch is stored in an array. The entry "0" contains the match, the following entries submatches. The positions of the matches are also available. They are encoded in the following manner to avoid another primitive: <position> "->" <match string> "->" is used as separator in the tradition of \meaning. There exists macros for parsing the output of \meaning (e.g. in LaTeX: \strip@prefix). The position "-1" with an empty string indicates that this entry is not set. Example: \def\msg#{\immediate\write16 } \msg{\pdfmatch{(l+)o (W(o))}{Hello World}} \msg{\pdflastmatch0} \msg{\pdflastmatch1} \msg{\pdflastmatch2} \msg{\pdflastmatch3} \msg{\pdflastmatch4} Result: 1 2->llo Wo 2->ll 6->Wo 7->o -1-> Alternative: PCRE (Perl-compatible regular expressions) is far more powerful. More options, named subpattern, ... License for 0.4 was GPL compatible, since 0.5 it is BSD, current version is 0.6. The TeX interface could be changed in the following way: * Addition: \pdflastmatchbyname <general text> It extracts matches for named subpattern. * Options can be given by the same name as in the PCRE description: \pdfmatch anchored caseless ... {}{} For easier/faster scanning the options could be restricted to be given in sorted order. * Or options can be given by letters in any order in an additional argument: \pdfmatch{<pattern>}{<options>}{<string>} \pdfmatch{l+}{ai}{Hello World} The implementation could then use strchr to check, whether an option is set. Patch instructions for testing are given in the patch description at sarovar. Have fun Heiko --