Lawtext syntax

Detailed syntax

Please refer to the comments in the source code referred from the following documents for the detailed syntax of Lawtext.

The library documentation for Line describes the types of Lines and links to the codes that contain the actual syntax definition by generic-parser (opens in a new tab) to convert a Lawtext string to a sequence of Lines.
The library documentation for VirtualLine describes the types of VirtualLines and the steps to convert a sequence of Lines to VirtualLines.
The library documentation for $law is the entry point of the parser that converts a sequence of VirtualLines to StdEL (JsonEL). It contains the actual syntax definition by generic-parser (opens in a new tab), and you can follow the defined rule to find syntax definitions for other element types.

How to try

Try it out here

On this page, open the browser console (for Chrome, press Ctrl+Shift+J (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Opt+J (Mac))..

Run the following command in the browser console:

lawtext.run({
    input: { elaws: "405AC0000000088" },
    outtypes: ["lawtext"],
})
    .then(r => {
        console.log("Lawtext:");
        console.log(r.lawtext);
        return lawtext.run({
            input: { lawtext: r.lawtext },
            outtypes: ["json"],
            controlel: true,
        });
    })
    .then(r => {
        console.log("\u{2705} Parsed VirtualLines:");
        console.log(r.virtuallines);
        console.table(r.virtuallines.map(v => ({
            "VirtualLine.type": v.type,
            ...Object.fromEntries(v.line?.rangeTexts().map(([, t, d], i) => [`rangeTexts()[${i}]`, t]) ?? []),
        })));
        console.log("\u{2705} Parsed StdEL (JsonEL):");
        console.log(r.json);
        console.log(JSON.stringify(r.json, undefined, 2));
    });

Hint: run console.log(lawtext.run.help) to show the help.

Try using the CLI

Please see CLI usage and run CLI with a lawtext input and json output with controlel option (and virtuallinesout option when running in Node.js) to get the parsed VirtualLines and the parsed StdEL (JsonEL) representation.

Try using the Visual Studio Code extension

You can try the extension at github.dev (opens in a new tab) with a few clicks. (A GitHub account is required. You can create one on the linked page.)
Otherwise, you can visit vscode.dev (opens in a new tab), install Lawtext extension (opens in a new tab) and ope n the sample Lawtext (opens in a new tab).

Parsing Analyzing