9.3 Codify

The codify command takes two arguments: an input file and an output file. It reads each line of the input file and writes a corresponding line to the output file. The corresponding line consists of a C macro call containing a string containing the input line. The command converts all backslashes in input lines to double backslashes so as to avoid unwanted interpretations by the C compiler. It also converts double quotes in the line to backslashed double quotes.

Syntax : codify = "codify" s filename s filename
Example: codify header.tex header.c

The following example demonstrates the transformation.

Input  Line:
 \def\par{\leavevmode\endgraf}% A "hack".
Output Line:
 WX("\\def\\par{\\leavevmode\\endgraf}% A \"hack\".");

The codify command was introduced to assist in the development of FunnelWeb. It is used to convert longish text files into C code to write them out. The C code is then included within the FunnelWeb C program. For example, the set of TeX definitions that appears at the top of every documentation file was codified and inserted into the FunnelWeb code so that FunnelWeb would not have to look for a file containing the definitions at run time.