The LeafPtg library provides computations that translate simple data objects into PTGNodes for use in building structured text:
Computations needed to create a PTGNode representing a string from an attribute named Sym created by mkidn are associated with the symbol IdPtg exported by the LeafPtg library. The PTGNode created is the value of the Ptg attribute of that symbol. Thus every SetName and SetElement node in Figure 4 can be provided with a Ptg attribute whose value is the string representing that node in the input text by the attribute grammar fragment:
(Remember that both SetName and SetElement inherit the computations of Entity.)
Note that the boxes in the third row of Figure 4, all of which contain asterisks, all represent the same number of occurrences. In other words, there is one Quoted, one Integer and one Name for each Set. Also, the diagram states directly that there is one SetName for each Set. These are important insights, because they show us where the information for the translation comes from.
Figure 4 associates translation computations with only two nodes other than SetName and SetElement: The set size and set definition must be computed at SetDef, and the header file must be constructed and output at text. Each of these computations involves gathering information from descendants, in the form of either lists or totals.
Because gathering information from descendants is a very common operation, a special notation for it is provided: CONSTITUENTS. A CONSTITUENTS expression specifies an attribute of a descendant that acts as the ultimate source of the information, and a process for combining that information from all of the descendants possessing it. This process is described by a clause of the form WITH (Type, Combine, Convert, Create). Here Type is the data type of the gathered information, while Combine, Convert and Create are functions yielding objects of that data type. Combine takes two Type objects and yields the result of combining them. Convert takes one object of the type of the attribute specified by the CONSTITUENTS expression and converts it to an appropriate Type object. Create creates an appropriate Type object from nothing.
The computations associated with text and SetDef both use CONSTITUENTS expressions heavily:
Consider the computation of SetDef.Size. This computation gathers information from the Ptg attributes of all of the SetElement descendants of the SetDef node. It gathers this information by applying ARGTOONE to every such attribute and passing the type-int result to that node's parent. At every node with more than one descendant, the computation applies ADD pairwise to the results from those descendants. If one of those descendants has no SetElement nodes as descendants, its result is obtained by evaluating the function ZERO with no arguments.
ADD, ARGTOONE and ZERO are all predefined functions. ADD takes two integer arguments and returns the integer sum, ARGTOONE takes one argument and returns the integer 1, while ZERO takes no arguments and returns the integer 0. Thus the effect of the expression CONSTITUENTS SetElement.Ptg WITH (int, ADD, ARGTOONE, ZERO) is to count the number of SetElement descendants of the SetDef node.
CONSTITUENTS SetElement.Ptg WITH (PTGNode, PTGList, PTGQuoted, PTGNull) can be analyzed similarly. PTGNull is a function exported by the structured text creation module. It yields PTGNULL, a distinguished PTGNode that represents the empty string.
The expression CONSTITUENT SetName.Ptg is valid if and only if the current node has exactly one descendant that is a SetName node. It's value is the Ptg attribute of that node. Note that because there is exactly one such descendant, no combining of information is required.
Finally, PTGNumb is a function exported by the LeafPtg library module. It accepts an argument of type int and delivers a PTGNode representing a sequence of digits giving the value of that argument.