001/*
002 *                    BioJava development code
003 *
004 * This code may be freely distributed and modified under the
005 * terms of the GNU Lesser General Public Licence.  This should
006 * be distributed with the code.  If you do not have a copy,
007 * see:
008 *
009 *      http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html
010 *
011 * Copyright for this code is held jointly by the individual
012 * authors.  These should be listed in @author doc comments.
013 *
014 * For more information on the BioJava project and its aims,
015 * or to join the biojava-l mailing list, visit the home page
016 * at:
017 *
018 *      http://www.biojava.org/
019 *
020 */
021
022package org.biojava.bio.program.tagvalue;
023
024import org.biojava.utils.ParserException;
025
026/**
027 * <p>
028 * Tokenize single records (lines of text, objects) into a tag and a value.
029 * </p>
030 *
031 * <p>
032 * TagValueParser instances may be stateful, that is they may remember
033 * previous values of tags or values, and return different TagValue responses
034 * accordingly.
035 * </p>
036 *
037 * @author Matthew Pocock
038 * @author Keith James
039 * @since 1.2
040 */
041public interface TagValueParser {
042    /**
043     * <p><code>EMPTY_LINE_EOR</code> is a special EOR value which
044     * allows an empty line to be used as a record separator. Normally
045     * this is not possible as the empty line will be swallowed by the
046     * preceding tag or value. Use this as an argument to the
047     * <code>setEndOfRecord</code> method.</p>
048     *
049     * <p>An empty line is defined as a line which contains nothing
050     * between the start and the following system-defined line
051     * separator. Therefore lines which contain only whitespace are
052     * not considererd to be empty.</p>
053     */
054    public static final String EMPTY_LINE_EOR = "";
055
056    public TagValue parse(Object record)
057        throws ParserException;
058}