如何以编程方式区分TeX和LaTeX文件

Question

I have a big collection of .tex files (TeX/LaTeX), and I'm writing a Python script that analyzes these files. I wish only to analyze LaTeX files, thus I want to remove all pure TeX files.

I have thought about making sure \\begin{document} is contained in every file, but this rejects quite a big amount of my files, since several files are only chapters in a book, long lists, or sections in a dissertation that does not have the \\begin{document} command.

Does anybody have an idea, how to filter all the pure TeX files away from my collection?

Answer 1

I think there's unlikely to be a completely foolproof way of doing this, given that you want to be sensitive to files which can be input with \\input or \\include . Given a particular file, though, you can probably classify it with considerable confidence by spotting the first of the following which you find.

1. TeX files usually end with \\bye , and that's typically not defined in a LaTeX file.
2. The macro \\begin is unlikely to be defined in a 'normal' TeX file (though \\end is defined in the plain format).

That's probably about the best you can do, though it would surely be enough for the sort of statistical analysis you appear to be doing.

There's nothing to stop someone writing a TeX file from defining \\begin to mean something, nor someone writing a LaTeX file to define \\bye to mean something. The problem, from your point of view, is that there aren't any TeX constructs that are truly forbidden in a LaTeX file (and vice versa), even though things like \\halign would be rare in LaTeX. Indeed, since LaTeX is 'just' a TeX format, there isn't any fundamental difference between the two, at all.

Just to drive the latter point home, there's such a thing as ConTeXt , which is a TeX format which isn't plain , but which isn't LaTeX either. It's rather rare, though.

Answer 2

Yeah sure, add all you file names to array, do this by listing the directory.

    x = os.listdir("path") 

This will add the directory contents to the variable x. Then loop through it:

    PureTex = []
    for Char in x:
        if Char.endswith('.tex'):
            PureTex.append(Char)
        else:
            pass

Now the PureTex array will contain the pure files.