RE: [Groff] String editing?

[Ted Harding]

On 10-Feb-00 Eddie Maddox wrote:
> How is string editing done? The Groff manual, ed. 1.12, Oct'99,
> is lacking that info, I think.
> 
> Ex:
> .<align or .<href or .<alt, etc.
> then:
> \\$0    == "<align" or "<href" or "<alt", etc.
> so: how do I strip the "<" so I can use just the "align" later on?

You don't -- at any rate not in groff. There are no string-editing
functions in groff.

Indeed it is one of the things that it would be very useful to have.
One could start with a function which "explodes" a string into
its component characters. Then these could become separate arguments
to an arbitrary macro, which should enable most string-editing
requirements to be met (admittedly in a rather brutish way).

A long-standing need which could be met by this is a "small-capitals"
facility, whereby

  This is Small Caps --> T\s-2HIS\s0 \s-2IS\s0 S\s-2MALL\s0 C\s-2APS\s0

(or similar). I've had this in mind as a hack to try for some time.
Maybe soon ...

Meanwhile, string-editing could be farmed out to an external
program such as sed or awk which is built for the job (using
a similar mechanism to the way psbb was used).

I hope this helps ...
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
Date: 10-Feb-00                                       Time: 23:09:27
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