Pep and Nom

ℕ𝕠𝕞 begin blocks

The begin block: nom code that is executed once at the beginning of the script.

Like awk*, the pep/nom language allows 'begin' blocks. These blocks are only executed once, whereas the rest of the script is executed in a loop for every character in the input stream.

The (eof) end-of-file or end-of-inputstream is in a sense the converse of the begin block because it allows you to do something at the end of the script.

an example begin block and 'do almost nothing' script



    begin {
      add "Starting script ...\n"; print; clear;
      # set the token delimiter to / 
      delim "/";  
    }
    read; print; clear;

convert text to a basic html document using begin and (eof)



    begin { add "<html><body><pre>\n"; print; clear; } 
    read; 
    replace "&" "&"; 
    replace ">" ">"; 
    replace "<" "<"; 
    print; clear;
    (eof) { add "\n</pre></body></pre>\n"; print; clear;}