reference database update

[Basile STARYNKEVITCH]

Hello Jeff,

Hello All,

I have yet another (tiny) suggestion regarding reference database. The
Lout user manual says (section 5.1) the index file refs.li should be
deleted when the reference file refs.ld changes.

Perhaps on Posix systems (and many others, possibly including MsDos)
this could be silently done by Lout, using the stat(2) system
call. Such a change doesn't do any harm to Lout files (document or
style files). It could be done with C code (setting a boolean flag
build_indexfile when the index file should be rebuilt) like

#ifdef HAVE_STAT
        struct stat indexstat, refstat;
        if (!stat(refname, &refstat) && !stat(indexname, &indexstat) 
            && refstat.st_mtime > indexstat.st_mtime) 
           build_indexfile = 1;
#endif /*HAVE_STAT*/

I do know of course that such things could be taken into account by
suitable make rules. Perhaps the Lout documentation could just mention
the appropriate rules (and the Lout distribution might contain a
lout.mk file includable by make). I don't want to start again the war
about Lout as a complete document processor vs Lout as a text
formatter used by higher tools.


Thanks for reading.

-- 

N.B. Any opinions expressed here are solely mine, and not of my organization.
N.B. Les opinions exprimees ici me sont personnelles et n engagent pas le CEA.

Please cite a **pertinent part** of my mail in all answers
Veuillez citer une **partie pertinente** de mon courrier dans vos reponses



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Basile STARYNKEVITCH   ----  Commissariat a l Energie Atomique (civil)
DRN/DMT/SERMA * CEA/Saclay bat.470 * 91191 GIF/YVETTE CEDEX * France
fax: (33) [1] 69.08.85.68; phone: 69.08.40.66; homephone: 46.65.45.53
email: address@hidden (or else address@hidden);  
I speak french, english, russian. Je parle francais, anglais, russe.
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