PROVREM - Removes selected provenance information from an NDF

Description:

This application removes selected ancestors, either by hiding them, or deleting them from the provenance information stored in a given NDF. The `generation gap' caused by removing an ancestor is bridged by assigning all the direct parents of the removed ancestor to each of the direct children of the ancestor.

The ancestors to be removed can be specified either by giving their indices (Parameter ANCESTOR), or by comparing each ancestor with a supplied pattern matching template (Parameter PATTERN).

If an ancestor is hidden rather than deleted (see Parameter HIDE), the ancestor is retained within the NDF, but a flag is set telling later applications to ignore the ancestor (exactly how the flag is used will depend on the particular application).

Usage:

provrem ndf pattern item

Parameters:

ANCESTOR = LITERAL (Read)

Specifies the indices of one or more ancestors that are to be removed. If a null (!) value is supplied, the ancestors to be removed are instead determined using the PATTERN parameter. Each supplied index must be positive and refers to one of the NDFs listed in the ANCESTORS table in the PROVENANCE extension of the NDF (including any hidden ancestors). Note, if ancestor indices are determined using the PROVSHOW command, then PROVSHOW should be run with the HIDE parameter set to FALSE; otherwise incorrect ancestor indices may be determined, resulting in the wrong ancestors being removed by PROVREM.

The maximum number of ancestors that can be removed is limited to 100 unless "LL", "*" or ! is specified. The supplied parameter value can take any of the following forms.

• "ALL" or "*" -- All ancestors.

• "xx,yy,zz" -- A list of ancestor indices.

• "xx:yy" -- Ancestor indices between xx and yy inclusively. When xx is omitted, the range begins from 0; when yy is omitted the range ends with the maximum value it can take, that is the number of ancestors described in the PROVENANCE extension.

• Any reasonable combination of above values separated by commas. [!]

HIDE = _LOGICAL (Read)

If TRUE, then the ancestors are not deleted, but instead have a flag set indicating that they have been hidden. All information about hidden ancestors is retained unchanged, and can be viewed using PROVSHOW if the HIDE parameter is set FALSE when running PROVSHOW. [FALSE]

ITEM = LITERAL (Read)

Specifies the item of provenance information that is checked against the pattern matching template specified for Parameter PATTERN. It can be "PATH", "CREATOR" or "DATE". ["PATH"]

NDF = NDF (Update)

The NDF data structure.

PATTERN = LITERAL (Read)

Specifies a pattern matching template using the syntax described below in ``Pattern Matching Syntax''. Each ancestor listed in the PROVENANCE extension of the NDF is compared with this template, and each ancestor that matches is removed. The item of provenance information to be compared to the pattern is specified by Parameter ITEM.

REMOVE = _LOGICAL (Read)

If TRUE, then the ancestors specified by Parameter PATTERN or ANCESTORS are removed. Otherwise, these ancestors are retained and all other ancestors are removed. [TRUE]

Examples:

provrem ff ancestor=1

This removes the first ancestor from the NDF called ff.

provrem ff ancestor=all

This erases all provenance information.

provrem ff pattern='_xb$|_yb$' hide

This hides, but does not permanently delete, all ancestors that have paths that end with "_xb" or "_yb". Note, provenance paths do not include a trailing ".sdf" string.

provrem ff pattern='_ave'

This removes all ancestors that have paths that contain the string "_ave" anywhere.

provrem ff pattern='_ave' remove=no

This removes all ancestors that have paths that do not contain the string "_ave" anywhere.

provrem ff pattern='_d[$\wedge$ /]*$'

This removes all ancestors that have file base-names that begin with "_d" . The pattern matches "_d" followed by any number of characters that are not "/", followed by the end of the string.

provrem ff pattern='$\wedge$ m51|$\wedge$ m31'

This removes all ancestors that have paths that begin with "m51" or "m31".

Pattern Matching Syntax :

The syntax for the PATTERN parameter value is a minimal form of regular expression. The following atoms are allowed.

• "[chars]" -- Matches any of the characters within the brackets.

• "[$\wedge$ chars]" -- Matches any character that is not within the brackets (ignoring the initial "$\wedge$ " character).
• "." -- Matches any single character.

• "\d" -- Matches a single digit.

• "\D" -- Matches anything but a single digit.

• "\w" -- Matches any alphanumeric character, and "_".

• "\W" -- Matches anything but alphanumeric characters, and "_".

• "\s" -- Matches white space.

• "\S" -- Matches anything but white space.

Any other character that has no special significance within a regular expression matches itself. Characters that have special significance can be matched by preceding them with a backslash ( $\backslash$ ) in which case their special significance is ignored (note, this does not apply to the characters in the set dDsSwW).

Note, minus signs ("-") within brackets have no special significance, so ranges of characters must be specified explicitly.

The following quantifiers are allowed.

• "*" -- Matches zero or more of the preceding atom, choosing the largest possible number that gives a match.

• "*?"-- Matches zero or more of the preceding atom, choosing the smallest possible number that gives a match.

• "+" -- Matches one or more of the preceding atom, choosing the largest possible number that gives a match.

• "+?"-- Matches one or more of the preceding atom, choosing the smallest possible number that gives a match.

• "?" -- Matches zero or one of the preceding atom.

• "{n}" -- Matches exactly $n$ occurrences of the preceding atom.

The following constraints are allowed.

• "$\wedge$ " -- Matches the start of the test string.

• "$" -- Matches the end of the test string.

Multiple templates can be concatenated, using the "|" character to separate them. The test string is compared against each one in turn until a match is found.

Related Applications :

KAPPA: PROVADD, PROVMOD, PROVSHOW.