CONCORDANCE(1) CONCORDANCE(1)
NAME
concordance - an application for making concordances of words in text
files.
SYNOPSIS
concordance [-p[q][n:num]][-l[q][n:num]][-s[q]] filename
[outputFilename]
DESCRIPTION
concordance is intended to be a non-destructive maker of concordances
for text files. It will read the file 'filename' and create a
concordance of the usage of the words in the file, and their locations
in the file. It creates 2 files: 'filename.wds' and 'filename.abc'
[or, if an outputFilename was given on the command line, files named
outputFilename.wds and outputFilename.abc]. The file 'filename.wds'
['outputFilename.wds'] will contain a list of the words used in the
file, 'filename', a statement of each word's length, the number of
times it was used in 'filename', and a list of the locations of its
use in the file 'filename'.
The way in which the list of locations of the words in the file
'filename' is generated depends on the options used on the command
line. The locations can be listed by either page, or line, or stanza
(if the file contains poetry and stanzas are numbered according to the
convention concordance recognizes (see option -s below for information
on the stanza numbering convention). NOTE that only one switch at a
time can be used. I.e., you cannot, for example, concordance a file
by BOTH page and line number in one run, though you can concordance
the same file in 2 runs by page and line number by concordancing it by
page on one run, then concordancing it by line on the second and
saving the second run in a differently named output file.
For the sake of making a set of concordances for documents that may
come in several consecutive parts, concordance allows the user to set
the beginning page/line/stanza number from which the locations of
words in the file will be determined. See the auxiliary option n: .
In addition to the word list of sizes, usage of words, and locations,
the concordance file 'filename.abc' ['outputFilename.abc'] contains a
list of characters used in the file 'filename', the number of times
each character was used, its overall percentage of use, and a graph of
all the characters used by their percentages.
OPTIONS
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Options set the manner in which words in a file are counted: whether
by page in the file, by line in the file, or by stanza. The beginning
page or line also can be set to something other than 1, the default,
using an auxiliary option, n: . Concordance can also be told to
output to stdout nothing but its copyright message by using the
auxiliary option, q.
Concordance, run on a file, 'filename', with no options set, defaults
to identifying word locations in the file by page and by considering
the first page in the file concordanced to be page 1.
-p The option -p tells concordance to determine the location of
words in the file by their page location. If the option 'n:num'
is not appended to -p, concordance assumes the first page in the
file to be page 1. Concordance considers page breaks to be marked
by the apearance of the standard ASCII formfeed character, FF
(ASCII code 12 (decimal) or 0x0C (hexadecimal)). concordance
increments the page location counter each time a formfeed
character is passed. If a file contains no formfeed characters,
the entire file, no matter how long it is, will be considered to
consist of page 1! To change the beginning page number, see the
auxiliary option n:num below. Note that concordance's default
behavior is to concordance files by page number so in that sense
a mere -p on the command line is a redundancy. But -p must be
used if you want to set a different beginning page number using
the auxiliary switch 'n:num'.
-l The option -l tells concordance to determine the location of
words in the file by their line location. It determines line
location by the presence of the linefeed character, LF (ASCII
code 10 (decimal) or 0x0A (hexadecimal)). Each time a linefeed
character is passed in reading the file, if word location is
being determined by lines, concordance increments the line-number
counter. If the additional option n:num is not appended to -l,
the first line in the file will be considered to be line number 1
and the rest of the lines incremented accordingly. To change the
beginning line number, see the auxiliary option 'n:num' below.
-s The option -s tells concordance to determine the location of
words in the file by their stanza location. Stanza locations are
determined by the manual insertion of stanza numbering in the
file to be concordanced in the form '1>' '2>'... 'n>' where the
stanza numbering indicator 'num>' immediately precedes the stanza
of that number. NOTE that in the case of using stanza locations
to make a concordance of the words in a file, the number placed
in the stanza numbering indicator will be the number given a
word's location. NOTE that the auxiliary option 'n:num' does
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nothing when combined with stanza counting.
(-p|-l)n:num
The auxiliary option n:num appended to either -p, or -l, (e.g.:
-pn:5 ) in which num is a decimal number, causes concordance to
consider the first page/line to be numbered 'num' and causes
concordance to increment page/line numbers from there. This is
so that if a set of files making up one large document is to be
concordanced, and, say, the first page of the 2nd file of the
set is actually page 21 of the entire set when all are combined,
the second document can be concordanced with the option -pn:21
to cause concordance to consider words on the first page of the
2nd document to be actually on page 21, the words on the 2nd page
of the 2nd document to be on page 22, and so forth. Thus a
multi-file document can be concordanced with successive page/line
numbers set correctly. n:num does nothing when word locations
are being determined by stanza, as the number of the stanza
depends on the stanza number indicators 'num>' in the file being
concordanced.
(-p|-l|-s)q
The auxiliary option 'q' appended to the count type switch or
between the count type switch and the other auxiliary switch,
n:num, causes concordance to run in 'quiet' mode. In normal
mode, concordance outputs to stdout, in addition to its initial
copyright and self-identification message, a couple of messages
as to what the filenames of the .wds, and .abc files are, and
indicates when it has completed its work. In quiet mode, it
only outputs its initial copyright-ID message.
RESOURCES
Concordance creates 2 files on disk: one with a file extension of .wds
and one with an extension of .abc . In creating the concordance,
concordance allocates memory for each new word and each new word
location in the list of words. Longer files require greater amounts of
memory. It is conceivable that on a very long file, one might run out
of memory, and might need to break a very long file into shorter ones.
But as this program was originally written for another operating
system that didn't use memory efficiently, the problem is probably
generic to that system, not UNIX/Linux.
DIAGNOSTICS
The program will output error messages if something that it recognizes
goes wrong, such as trying to create a concordance for a non-existent
text file.
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SEE ALSO
Come to think of it, I haven't seen any programs similar to this, but
I have a sneaking suspicion you might be able to accomplish the same
thing using awk, or for those really into the zen of UN*X, ed - the
real man's editor!
COPYRIGHT
concordance is Copyright (c) 1996 Ralph L. Meyer
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
BUGS
Several small bugs, and some cosmetic things were fixed before upload.
Testing seems to indicate that most bugs have been anesthetized into
oblivion. But there is no guarantee of that. If you find any bugs
lurking in the program's more arcane (or less arcane) corners, then
send a bug report to:
Ralph Meyer 39 Nelson Avenue Spotswood, NJ 08884
or E-mail meyer@princeton.edu
AUTHOR
Ralph Meyer 39 Nelson Avenue Spotswood, NJ 08884
E-Mail: meyer@princeton.edu
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