Simple library for parsing MATLAB/Octave-like matrix input

Introduction

The purpose of this library is to provide simple parser for text files with the data specified in key-value format (hence the name libkv). The types of values could be ASCII-strings, integers, floating point numbers. It also supports MATLAB/Octave-like syntax for vectors and matricies of integers and doubles, therefore making it convinient to test own numeric-oriented libraries against MATLAB/Octave prototypes.

Syntax

An input file consists of a set of assignments with MATLAB/Octave-like syntax. Every assignment should ends with semicolon ';'. The r-values (types) are the following:

• integers: a = 5;
• floats: pi = 3.15;
• strings (surrounded with '"'): message="hello"
• arrays of integers or floats: vec = [1;2;3];
• matrix of integers or floats:

mtx = [1,    2,    3;
       4,    5, -1.5;
       0, -1.2,    4];

Newlines and comments (starting with # or %) are ignored.

Usage

Link against the output library libkv. See the code example in main.c.

Include the library header:

#include "libkv.h"

Parse the file

struct kv_table_t* table = libkv_parse_file(file);

or string

struct kv_table_t* table = libkv_parse_string(file);

into the key-value table.

Access the values using the kv_table_get method declared in kv_table.h. This method returns the pointer to the appropriate kv_value_t struct (or null if not found). One can operate with this struct using the set of methods declared in kv.h or by just accessing fields.

If needed to transfer ownership on values, like strings, vectors and matricies, one can use the kv_table_drop to get rid of the value in the table. Therefore the when the kv_table_free method called this values will not be deallocated.

Example:

const char* string = 0;
struct kv_table_t* table = libkv_parse_file(file);
const struct kv_value_t* value = kv_table_get(table, "myvariable");
if (value && kv_type(value) == VALUE_STRING)
{
   string = kv_string(value); /* transferring ownership, now we are responsible
                               * for freeing it later
                               */
   kv_table_drop(table, "myvariable");
}
kv_table_free(table);

Deallocate the table using the kv_table_free method. It will perform deep deallocation, therefore copy values or take ownership and drop them from table before deallocating.

Note on matricies and vectors

The library assumes integers in input until it encounters the first floating-point value. When the library converts the vector/matrix to the double format.

The vector-row or vector-column interpreted by the library equally and represented as kv_vector_t.