man/man7/plumb.7

.TH PLUMB 7
.SH NAME
plumb \- format of plumb messages and rules
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B #include <plumb.h>
.SH DESCRIPTION
.SS "Message format
The messages formed by the
.IR plumb (3)
library are formatted for transmission between
processes into textual form, using newlines to separate
the fields.
Only the data field may contain embedded newlines.
The fields occur in a specified order,
and each has a name, corresponding to the elements
of the
.B Plumbmsg
structure, that is used in the plumbing rules.
The fields, in order, are:
.RS
.TF ndata
.TP
.B src
application/service generating message
.TP
.B dst
destination `port' for message
.TP
.B wdir
working directory (used if data is a file name)
.TP
.B type
form of the data, e.g.
.B text
.TP
.B attr
attributes of the message, in
.IB name = value
pairs separated by white space
(the value must follow the usual quoting convention if it contains
white space or quote characters or equal signs; it cannot contain a newline)
.TP
.B ndata
number of bytes of data
.TP
.B data
the data itself
.RE
At the moment, only textual data
.RB ( type=text )
is supported.
.PD
.PP
All fields are optional, but
.B type
should usually be set since it describes the form of the data, and
.B ndata
must be an accurate count (possibly zero) of the number of bytes of data.
A missing field is represented by an empty line.
.SS "Plumbing rules
The
.B plumber
(see
.IR plumb (1))
receives messages on its
.B send
port (applications
.I send
messages there), interprets and reformats them, and (typically) emits them from a destination port.
Its behavior is determined by a plumbing rules file, default
.BR /usr/$user/lib/plumbing ,
which defines a set of pattern/action rules with which to analyze, rewrite, and dispatch
received messages.
.PP
The file is a sequence of rule sets, each of which is a set of one-line rules
called patterns and actions.
There must be at least one pattern and one action in each rule set.
(The only exception is that a rule set may contain nothing but
.B plumb
.B to
rules; such a rule set declares the named ports but has no other effect.)
A blank line terminates a rule set.
Lines beginning with a
.B #
character are commentary and are regarded as blank lines.
.PP
A line of the form
.EX
	include \f2file\fP
.EE
substitutes the contents of
.I file
for the line, much as in a C
.B #include
statement.  Unlike in C, the file name is not quoted.
If
.I file
is not an absolute path name, or one beginning
.B ./
or
.BR ../ ,
.I file
is looked for first in the directory in which the plumber is executing,
and then in
.BR /sys/lib/plumb .
.PP
When a message is received by the
.BR plumber ,
the rule sets are examined in order.
For each rule set, if the message matches all the patterns in the rule set,
the actions associated with the rule set are triggered to dispose of the message.
If a rule set is triggered, the rest are ignored for this message.
If none is triggered, the message is discarded (giving a write error to the sender)
unless it has a
.B dst
field that specifies an existing port, in which case the message is emitted, unchanged, from there.
.PP
Patterns and actions all consist of three components: an
.IR object ,
a
.IR verb ,
and arguments.
These are separated by white space on the line.
The arguments may contain quoted strings and variable substitutions,
described below, and in some cases contain multiple words.
The object and verb are single words from a pre-defined set.
.PP
The object in a pattern is the name of an element of the message, such as
.B src
or
.BR data ,
or the special case
.BR arg ,
which refers to the argument component of the current rule.
The object in an action is always the word
.BR plumb .
.PP
The verbs in the pattern rules
describe how the objects and arguments are to be interpreted.
Within a rule set, the patterns are evaluated in sequence; if one fails,
the rule set fails.
Some verbs are predicates that check properties of the message; others rewrite
components of the message and implicitly always succeed.
Such rewritings are permanent, so rules that specify them should be placed after
all pattern-matching rules in the rule set.
.RS
.TF delete
.TP
.B add
The object must be
.BR attr .
Append the argument, which must be a sequence of
.IB name = value
pairs, to the list of attributes of the message.
.TP
.B delete
The object must be
.BR attr .
If the message has an attribute whose name is the argument,
delete it from the list of attributes of the message.
(Even if the message does not, the rule matches the message.)
.TP
.B is
If the text of the object is identical to the text of the argument,
the rule matches.
.TP
.B isdir
If the text of the object
is the name of an existing directory, the rule matches and
sets the variable
.B $dir
to that directory name.
.TP
.B isfile
If the text of the object is the name of an existing file (not a directory),
the rule matches and sets the variable
.B $file
to that file name.
.TP
.B matches
If the entire text of the object matches the regular expression
specified in the argument, the rule matches.
This verb is described in more detail below.
.TP
.B set
The value of the object is set to the value of the argument.
.RE
.PP
The
.B matches
verb has special properties that enable the rules to select which portion of the
data is to be sent to the destination.
By default, a
.B data
.B matches
rule requires that the entire text matches the regular expression.
If, however, the message has an attribute named
.BR click ,
that reports that the message was produced by a mouse click within the
text and that the regular expressions in the rule set should be used to
identify what portion of the data the user intended.
Typically, a program such as an editor will send a white-space delimited
block of text containing the mouse click, using the value of the
.B click
attribute (a number starting from 0) to indicate where in the textual data the user pointed.
.PP
When the message has a
.B click
attribute, the
.B data
.B matches
rules extract the longest leftmost match to the regular expression that contains or
abuts the textual location identified by the
.BR click .
For a sequence of such rules within a given rule set, each regular expression, evaluated
by this specification, must match the same subset of the data for the rule set to match
the message.
For example, here is a pair of patterns that identify a message whose data contains
the name of an existing file with a conventional ending for an encoded picture file:
.EX
	data matches '[a-zA-Z0-9_\-./]+'
	data matches '([a-zA-Z0-9_\-./]+)\.(jpe?g|gif|bit|ps|pdf)'
.EE
The first expression extracts the largest subset of the data around the click that contains
file name characters; the second sees if it ends with, for example,
.BR \&.jpeg .
If only the second pattern were present, a piece of text
.B horse.gift
could be misinterpreted as an image file named
.BR horse.gif .
.PP
If a
.B click
attribute is specified in a message, it will be deleted by the
.B plumber
before sending the message if the
.B data
.B matches
rules expand the selection.
.PP
The action rules all have the object
.BR plumb .
There are only three verbs for action rules:
.RS
.TF client
.TP
.B to
The argument is the name of the port to which the message will be sent.
If the message has a destination specified, it must match the
.B to
port of the rule set or the entire rule set will be skipped.
(This is the only rule that is evaluated out of order.)
.TP
.B client
If no application has the port open, the arguments to a
.B plumb
.B start
rule specify a shell program to run in response to the message.
The message will be held, with the supposition that the program
will eventually open the port to retrieve it.
.TP
.B start
Like
.BR client ,
but the message is discarded.
Only one
.B start
or
.B client
rule should be specified in a rule set.
.RE
.PP
The arguments to all rules may contain quoted strings, exactly as in
.IR rc (1).
They may also contain simple string variables, identified by a leading dollar sign
.BR $ .
Variables may be set, between rule sets, by assignment statements in the style of
.BR rc .
Only one variable assignment may appear on a line.
The
.B plumber
also maintains some built-in variables:
.RS
.TF $wdir
.TP
.B $0
The text that matched the entire regular expression in a previous
.B data
.B matches
rule.
.BR $1 ,
.BR $2 ,
etc. refer to text matching the first, second, etc. parenthesized subexpression.
.TP
.B $attr
The textual representation of the attributes of the message.
.TP
.B $data
The contents of the data field of the message.
.TP
.B $dir
The directory name resulting from a successful
.B isdir
rule.
If no such rule has been applied, it is the string constructed
syntactically by interpreting
.B data
as a file name in
.BR wdir .
.TP
.B $dst
The contents of the
.B dst
field of the message.
.TP
.B $file
The file name resulting from a successful
.B isfile
rule.
If no such rule has been applied, it is the string constructed
syntactically by interpreting
.B data
as a file name in
.BR wdir .
.TP
.B $type
The contents of the
.B type
field of the message.
.TP
.B $src
The contents of the
.B src
field of the message.
.TP
.B $wdir
The contents of the
.B wdir
field of the message.
.TP
.B $plan9
The root directory of the Plan 9 tree
(see
.IR get9root (3)).
.RE
.SH EXAMPLE
The following is a modest, representative file of plumbing rules.
.EX
# these are generally in order from most specific to least,
# since first rule that fires wins.

addr=':(#?[0-9]+)'
protocol='(https?|ftp|file|gopher|mailto|news|nntp|telnet|wais)'
domain='[a-zA-Z0-9_@]+([.:][a-zA-Z0-9_@]+)*/?[a-zA-Z0-9_?,%#~&/\e-]+'
file='([:.][a-zA-Z0-9_?,%#~&/\e-]+)*'

# image files go to page
type is text
data matches '[a-zA-Z0-9_\e-./]+'
data matches '([a-zA-Z0-9_\e-./]+)\.(jpe?g|gif|bit)'
arg isfile $0
plumb to image
plumb start page -w $file

# URLs go to web browser
type is text
data matches $protocol://$domain$file
plumb to web
plumb start window webbrowser $0

# existing files, possibly tagged by line number, go to edit/sam
type is text
data matches '([.a-zA-Z0-9_/\-]+[a-zA-Z0-9_/\e-])('$addr')?'
arg isfile $1
data set $file
attr add addr=$3
plumb to edit
plumb start window sam $file

# .h files are looked up in /sys/include and passed to edit/sam
type is text
data matches '([a-zA-Z0-9]+\e.h)('$addr')?'
arg isfile /sys/include/$1
data set $file
attr add addr=$3
plumb to edit
plumb start window sam $file
.EE
.PP
The following simple plumbing rules file is a good beginning set of rules.
.EX
# to update: cp /usr/$user/lib/plumbing /mnt/plumb/rules

editor = acme
# or editor = sam
include basic
.EE
.SH FILES
.TF $HOME/lib/plumbing
.TP
.B $HOME/lib/plumbing
default rules file.
.TP
.B plumb
service name for
.IR plumber (4).
.TP
.B \*9/plumb
directory for
.B include
files.
.TP
.B \*9/plumb/fileaddr
public macro definitions.
.TP
.B \*9/plumb/basic
basic rule set.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.IR plumb (1),
.IR plumb (3),
.IR plumber (4),
.IR regexp (7)