Re: [Groff] Parsing specific section of man page

[Anton Shepelev]

Vannevar Bush:

> It  parses  and shows me the whole page. What if I
> want to parse only OPTIONS section ? I am  looking
> for something like :-
>
>    groff -X -P -resolution -P100 -man -parse-section "OPTIONS" passwd

Here is my quick, dirty and incomplete solution:

   .nr skip 0u \" Flag to indicate whether the current text is to be skipped
   .am TH      \" Have to append .TH, because the man macros are initialized
   .           \" inside .TH
   .
   .   de scls end \" Couldn't make this part work:
   .      br       \" Can't covert a diversion to a string
   .      di       \" usable for comparison with the current title
   .      in
   .      ds sectxt \\\\*[secn]\"Collecting the input line after call to SH
   .      SH-N \\\\*[sectxt]\"and passing ti to SH-N as parameter.
   .   end
   .   rn SH SH-orig \" Rename the original SH so as to prepend it.
   .   de SH end     \" The definition of the new SH
   .      ie '\\\\$*'' \{\\"Title given on the next input line
   .         in 0
   .         it 1 scls \"Input trap to capture the next input line
   .         di secn   \"Inside this diversion
   .      \}
   .      el .SH-N \\\\$* \" Title given as parameter
   .   end
   .
   .   de SH-N end
   .      nr b-print 0
   .      if '\\\\*[secf]''       .nr b-print 1
   .      if '\\\\*[secf]'\\\\$1' .nr b-print 1
   .      ie \\\\n[b-print] \{\
   .         if \\\\n[skip] \{\
   .            nr skip 0
   .            br
   .            di
   .            ch devnull
   .         \}
   .         SH-orig \\\\$*
   .      \}
   .      el \{\
   .         if !\\\\n[skip] \{\
   .            nr skip 1u
   .            br
   .            di devnull
   .         \}
   .      \}
   .   end
   ..
   .TH 1 Title
   .SH One
   Text of section One
   .P
   Another paragraph
   .SH Two
   Text of section Two
   .SH Three
   Text of section Three

See how it works by processing the file with groff:

   Print whole file:
      groff -Tascii -man secfilter.man -P-cbu> secfilter.txt

   Print individual sections:
      groff -Tascii -man -dsecf=One   secfilter.man -P-cbu> secfilter.txt
      groff -Tascii -man -dsecf=Two   secfilter.man -P-cbu> secfilter.txt
      groff -Tascii -man -dsecf=Three secfilter.man -P-cbu> secfilter.txt

Anton