textproc/p5-Chess-PGN-Parse 0.20 FreeBSD

Chess::PGN::Parse offers a range of methods to read and manipulate Portable Game Notation files. PGN files contain chess games produced by chess programs following a standard format (http://www.schachprobleme.de/chessml/faq/pgn/). It is among the preferred means of chess games distribution. Being a public, well established standard, PGN is understood by many chess archive programs. Parsing simple PGN files is not difficult. However, dealing with some of the intricacies of the Standard is less than trivial. This module offers a clean handle toward reading and parsing complex PGN files.

A PGN file has several tags, which are key/values pairs at the header of each game, in the format [key "value"]

After the header, the game follows. A string of numbered chess moves, optionally interrupted by braced comments and recursive parenthesized variants and comments. While dealing with simple braced comments is straightforward, parsing nested comments can give you more than a headache.