Re: looking at lilypond data structures

[David Kastrup]

Kim Shrier <address@hidden> writes:

> Just to satisfy personal curiosity, I am looking at the lilypond source code
> so I can get a better feel for what it is up to and how it accomplishes its
> job.
>
> My understanding is that the parser constructs a scheme data structure
> which is subsequently processed by the iterators to turn it into a stream
> (or several streams) of musical events.  Before I start looking at the
> iterators, I would like to see what they are working with for input.
>
> So, I have a few questions.
>
> Is my understanding correct that the parser produces a single scheme
> expression that is then processed for use in later stages?

No.  The parser calls various hook functions for processing elements
encountered in the input such as scores, markups, books, bookparts.

> If I wanted to print out this mythical data structure, is there an
> easy way to do that?

There is no such data structures.  You might change the respective hook
functions so that they print material as it is encountered.

> Is it something that is appropriate to pass to displayMusic or
> displayScheme?

Sometimes.

> How do I get a reference to this data structure?

There is no such structure.

> What I would like to do is have lilypond parse some simple files that
> I would create for the purposes of seeing the different things that
> the parser generates.

Basically you need to change the hooks for that kind of thing.  They are
set up in ly/declarations-init.ly such as

#(define toplevel-book-handler print-book-with-defaults)
#(define toplevel-bookpart-handler collect-bookpart-for-book)
#(define toplevel-music-handler collect-music-for-book)
#(define toplevel-score-handler collect-scores-for-book)
#(define toplevel-text-handler collect-scores-for-book)

#(define book-bookpart-handler ly:book-add-bookpart!)
#(define book-music-handler collect-book-music-for-book)
#(define book-score-handler ly:book-add-score!)
#(define book-text-handler ly:book-add-score!)

#(define bookpart-score-handler ly:book-add-score!)
#(define bookpart-text-handler ly:book-add-score!)
#(define bookpart-music-handler collect-book-music-for-book)
#(define output-def-music-handler context-defs-from-music)
#(define context-mod-music-handler context-mod-from-music)

> If at all possible, I would like to avoid making special hacks in the
> source for dumping out various data structures.  If I can do what I
> want from scheme without touching the source, that would be ideal.

You can just change those hooks as you want to and set them to different
values.

-- 
David Kastrup