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<title>The cpphoaf command-line tool [cpphoafparser Library for the Hanoi Omega-Automata Format (HOAF), version 0.99.2]</title>
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<div class="nav"><a class="nav" href="index.html">^ Overview</a></div>
<h1>
The <span class="blue1">cpp</span><span class="blue2">hoaf</span> Command-Line Tool<br/>
<span style="font-size:70%">The <span class="blue">cpphoafparser</span>
Library for the Hanoi Omega-Automata Format (HOAF), version 0.99.2</span>
</h1>
<p>
The cpphoafparser library provides a command-line interface to some of
the functionality. This can be roughly divided into two broad areas:
</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Validating</em> an automaton (no syntax errors, declared properties are correct, ...)</li>
<li><em>Transforming</em> an automaton (translating from state- to transition-based acceptance, ...)</li>
</ul>
<p>We assume here that the reader is familiar with the basic concepts of
the <a href="http://adl.github.io/hoaf/">Hanoi Omega-Automata Format (HOAF)</a>.
</p>
<h2><a name="general">General</a></h2>
<h3>Obtaining and invoking the command-line tool</h3>
We assume here that you have downloaded the source code archive
from the <a href="http://automata.tools/hoa/cpphoafparser/">website</a>.
Unpack and build (Linux, OS X, ...):
<pre class="command">
tar xzvf cpphoafparser-xx.yy.tgz
cd cpphoafparser-xx.yy
make
</pre>
<p>
where <i>xx.yy</i> is the version.</p>
<p>Alternatively, for Windows, you can download a precompiled binary.</p>
<p>There is also a <span class="classname">CMakeLists.txt</span>
configuration for <a href="http://www.cmake.org/">CMake</a> available. In the top-level directory, execute:
<pre class="command">
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../src
make
</pre>
<p>CMake can alse be used to generate Visual Studio project files.</p>
<h3>Getting Help</h3>
<p>With</p>
<pre class="command">
./cpphoaf help
</pre>
<p>you'll obtain a brief description of the supported commands and
flags.</p>
<h3>Input / Output</h3>
<p>
The command-line tool reads the file specified on the command-line, performs the required
processing and outputs the result to the standard output.
The hyphen character '-' can be used instead of the filename for reading from standard input.
Below, we provide some examples of invoking the command-line tool:
</p>
<p>
In the simplest case, the following command parses the automaton
from automaton.hoa and prints the result
(the parsed automaton without comments, extra whitespace, etc) to the
console:
</p>
<pre class="command">
./cpphoaf print automaton.hoa
</pre>
<p>
In the next example, we pipe the output of some other tool to the
input of cpphoaf:
</p>
<pre class="command">
./some-hoa-producer | ./cpphoaf print -
</pre>
<p>
The output can be captured as usual to a file using redirection:
</p>
<pre class="command">
./some-hoa-producer | ./cpphoaf print - > result.hoa
</pre>
<p>
Note: Take care that you do not simultaneously read and write from/to the same file!
</p>
<h3>Commands and Flags</h3>
<p>
The general structure of invoking the command line-tool is
</p>
<pre class="command">
./cpphoaf command flag(s) file(s)
</pre>
<h3>Multiple automata</h3>
<p>
The HOA format supports the streaming of automata, i.e., the ability to represent a
sequence of automata in a single file.
</p>
<p>
Please note that, currently, the <span class="prog">cpphoaf</span> tool only supports parsing
a single automaton.
</p>
<h3>Exit value</h3>
<p>
If you want to use the command-line tool in scripts, the value returned by the tool on exit
is useful for diagnosing errors. The tool will return 0 for success/no errors. If there are
errors during the processing of the automata, the value 1 will be returned. If there are problems
with the invocation (invalid command-line arguments, ...), the value 2
will be returned.
</p>
<h2><a name="validating">Validating Automata</a></h2>
<p>To check that an automaton in HOA format can be successfully parsed, run
</p>
<pre class="commandWithOutput">
./cpphoaf parse automaton-file.hoa
</pre>
<pre class="output">
Parsing OK
</pre>
<p>If everything went fine, the tool will output that parsing was OK,
otherwise there will be an error message indicating what went wrong.</p>
<p>Upon success, the automaton</p>
<ul>
<li>has been successfully parsed (syntax conforms to the HOA
format),</li>
<li>properties specified in the header have been verified to be
correct (violations of <em>state-labels</em>, <em>trans-labels</em>,
<em>implicit-labels</em>, <em>explicit-labels</em>, <em>state-acc</em>,
<em>trans-acc</em>, <em>no-univ-branch</em>, <em>colored</em> are currently detected;
for the <em>deterministic</em> and <em>complete</em> properties, violations are
currently only detected when implicit transition labels are used),
</li>
<li>if an <em>acc-name</em> header has been provided and is one
of the standard acceptance conditions specified in the format, the
correspondence with the <em>Acceptance</em> header has been verified
</li>
<li>the number, ordering and names of the states are valid with regard to
the restrictions specified in the HOA format,
</li>
<li>if implicit transition labels are used, the required number is present,
</li>
<li>alias definitions are non-recursive and all aliases, atomic propositions and
acceptance sets that are used are defined.
</li>
</ul>
<p>
The semantic validations can be disabled by the command-line
option <span class="cmdline">--no-validate</span>. The following command
will only check the syntactic correctness according to the HOA format:
</p>
<pre class="command">
./cpphoaf parse --no-validate automaton.hoa
</pre>
<h2>Transforming the Automaton</h2>
<h3>Pretty-printing the Automaton</h3>
<p>The simplest transformation is barely a transformation at all. Via</p>
<pre class="command">
./cpphoaf print automaton-file.hoa
</pre>
<p>the automaton is simply parsed and printed back to the standard output.</p>
<p>
As comments and superfluous whitespace are ignored by the parser, this transforms the
automaton into some kind of canonical form, with the different elements of the HOA format
each placed on a single line.
</p>
<h3>Resolving Aliases</h3>
<p>
The command-line option <span class="cmdline">--resolve-aliases</span> activates a transformation
that (1) removes the <em>Alias:</em> <a class="explanationref" href="http://adl.github.io/hoaf/#alias" target="_blank">?</a>
definitions and (2) resolves all <em>@alias</em> references in
transition labels.</p>
<p>The following command reads the automaton, resolves the aliases and prints the resulting automaton:</p>
<pre class="command">
./cpphoaf print --resolve-aliases automaton-file.hoa
</pre>
<p>
The option <span class="cmdline">--resolve-aliases</span>
can be used with all other commands and options.
</p>
<h2>Tracing, Implementation Details</h2>
<p>If you wish to implement your own transformations or want to use the cpphoafparser library,
it might be interesting to play around with the <span class="cmdline">--trace</span> option:</p>
<pre class="command">
./cpphoaf parse --trace automaton-file.hoa
</pre>
<p>
If activated, tracing will output the sequence of method calls into
the <em>HOAConsumer</em> by
the parser. This can be used to study the correspondence of syntactical elements in the
HOA format and the method calls.
</p>
<p>
The command-line utility is implemented in the
<span class="classname">src/cpphoaf.cc</span>. It relies on the various
<em>HOAConsumers</em> for the functionality and is a good entry-point for further investigations.
</p>
<hr>
<p>If you have further questions, find bugs or want to tell
us about your use of the cpphoafparser library, please feel free to contact us!</p>
<p>(c) 2015-2016
Joachim Klein &lt;klein&#064;tcs.inf.tu-dresden.de&gt;,
David M&uuml;ller &lt;david.mueller&#064;tcs.inf.tu-dresden.de&gt;
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