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Re: Understanding herd of curly braces


From: Phil Holmes
Subject: Re: Understanding herd of curly braces
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:13:26 -0000

I know others have answered, but here's my take.  A pair of curly braces { } enclose a block of code.  That block usually has a command of some sort that applies to it.  So
 
  \relative c' { c4 c c c }
 
would mean that the \relative command applies to all 4 notes within the braces.  It's quite common to have blocks of code within blocks of code.  So - if we have a new staff and some music relative to c' within it, we could write:
 
 \new Staff { \relative c' { c4 c c c } }
 
This can happen with many blocks-within-blocks.  So to try to make it clearer where the blocks are, it's standard practice to indent each block of code.  So the code I wrote above would become:
 
\new Staff {
  \relative c' {
    c4 c c c
  }
}
 
So the lowest brace lines up with the \new and the one higher lines up with the \relative, and it's not too hard to see how the braces match.  But this is only a convention - LilyPond doesn't care about indents and lining up in the slightest - she simply requires that the braces match up to form proper blocks.
 
Hope that helps.

--
Phil Holmes
 
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 9:07 PM
Subject: Understanding herd of curly braces

I have turned out a few simple jobs with LilyPond, mainly simple copying jobs just for practice and -- as a practical matter -- a few pieces that I needed to transpose into another key.

However, as I look at LilyPond code generated by others, it's not obvious to me (usually near the end of a document) what each closing curly brace refers to.

Am I even SUPPOSED to be able to figure that out by looking at all the closed curly braces, usually at different indentations on different lines?  Are you supposed to see these things and know to what they apply in the code above?  Is there a logic here that I'm missing?

I am trying to figure out the logic of why the close braces (in particular) appear where they are and at a given indentation.  So far there's nothing intuitive about it.

Such documentation as I've been able to find at the LilyPond site and elsewhere has been of limited utility in this regard.

Is this something you just learn by doing?  Or can anybody help me out?

Seth Williamson


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