Property Provider

Property Provider defines a set of operations on relations. This console program supports visualizing and manipulating such operations and relations from a small and portable executable with minimal dependencies, using a simple text file as project storage.

Running

Run pp.exe or pp on your terminal.

Available options:

--help, -h: shows help.

--file [file], -f [file]: opens a file on startup.

Commands

There are two levels of prompt: main (PP>) and table (>). Please inspect the prompt marker to determine the currently active prompt.

Main commands

PP> exit, Ctrl + C or SIGINT

Quit.

PP> h|help

Get help.

PP> load [file path]

Load an input file (no quotes, in current directory or full path).

PP> classes

List loaded classes.

PP> relations

List loaded relations.

PP> [class name]

List the elements of a class.

PP> [class name] v [class name]

Plot a relation joining two classes.

PP> [class name] v [class name] . [element name]

Score an element of a key class against elements in the same class with respect to a value class for similarity.

PP> [class name] v [class name] .. [element name]

Same as the last one, but displays true values (characteristics) instead of equal values. This table displays the definitions of objects.

PP> [class name] v [class name] , [element name]

Score an element of a key class against elements in the same class with respect to a value class for dissimilarity.

PP> [class name] v [class name] ,, [element name]

Same as the last one, but displays true values (characteristics/definition) instead of equal values.

PP> outfile

Prints the path of the output file.

Table commands

> exit

Quit.

> h|help

Get help.

> d|display

Displays the current table.

> b|break, Ctrl + C or SIGINT

Breaks back into the main prompt.

> pp|pn|pf|pl|p[page number]

Navigates to the previous, next, first, last, or specific page, respectively.

> save

Writes the complete last table input and output to the output file. Unlike visualization through the prompt, this output is not paged but rather contains the full table.

Sample file

Please check the sample file SampleFile.txt for an example basic project.

Input file format

The input text file has the following structure:

General rules

• Leading or trailing whitespace is ignored
• Empty lines are ignored
• Comment lines begin with // or #

1. Class declarations

   • Must be the first section
   • A comma delimits the class from the element
   • One declaration per line

   Example:

   Class1, Element1
   Class1, Element2
   ...
   
   Class2, Element1
   Class2, Element2
   ...
   

2. Relation declarations

   • Must be the second section
   • A comma delimits the key element from the value element
   • Elements are qualified in the format [class name].[element name]
   • A class can't be both a key and a value in a relation

   Example:

   Class1.Element1   , Class2.Element1
   Class1.Element1   , Class2.Element2
   
   Class1.Element2   , Class2.Element2
   ...
   

Building

To build:

1. Download a bflat v8.x release from https://github.com/bflattened/bflat/releases and add the executable to your path
2. Navigate to the source directory in your terminal
3. Run powershell -c ". ./build.ps1"
4. The executable will be output to bin

Dependencies

• C++ Standard Library

  • On Ubuntu 20.04, run:

    sudo apt update
    sudo apt install libc++-dev
    

    On Fedora 39, run:

    sudo dnf install libcxx