# Music notation ABC **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [December 19, 2007, 4:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/music-notation-abc/123656 "2007-12-19T16:01:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![lunatic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/73ab20/32.png) [@lunatic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/lunatic)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2007, 4:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/music-notation-abc/123656/1 "2007-12-19T16:01:09Z")
Hi, Do you know something about library for parse ABC music notation? I want something or write something to load files containig mutliple ABC tunes, organise then cherche for similar tunes in the files, create listes of tunes from the files, sets of tunes and books of sets whith index. I leanr Ruby (beginner) and I think it’s a good thing o do for a musician to work around is center of interests. Here is a linl about ABC notation: [http://www.walshaw.plus.com/abc/](http://www.walshaw.plus.com/abc/) Thanks for informations and afflicted to make you undergo my aglais. ---
**Author:** ![lunatic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/73ab20/32.png) [@lunatic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/lunatic)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2007, 5:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/music-notation-abc/123656/2 "2007-12-19T17:30:13Z")
-------- Original-Nachricht -------- > Datum: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 00:01:05 +0900 > Von: Lunatic D. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > An: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > Betreff: Music notation ABC > musician to work around is center of interests. > > Here is a linl about ABC notation: [http://www.walshaw.plus.com/abc/](http://www.walshaw.plus.com/abc/) > > ## Thanks for informations and afflicted to make you undergo my aglais. > > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). Hello, welcome to Ruby :). I couldn’t find any ready-made library for abc in Ruby. But as the link you gave shows that the notation is done in ASCII text, you can search that text for tune bits (=Strings) or for Regular Expressions. These are patterns which allow you to search for occurrences of many strings at the same time, e.g., you can search for all Strings having “at least three, but at most five occurrences of any of “a”,“b”,“c”, followed but a letter, which is anything but “C” or “D”, then something arbitrary and a “c” at the end.” The corresponding Regexp is reg=/[a-c]{3,5}[^CD].+c$/ . So, for tune1=“CDEabcacdAAc” tune2=“CDabcacdCCc” ref1=reg.match(tune1) ref2=reg.match(tune2) p ref1[0] =\> “abcacdAAc” p ref2[0] =\> “abcacdCCc” There is more comprehensive information about what Regexps can do for you here: [http://www.rubyist.net/~slagell/ruby/regexp.html](http://www.rubyist.net/~slagell/ruby/regexp.html) [Ruby Regexp Class - Regular Expressions in Ruby](http://www.regular-expressions.info/ruby.html) . I know too little about music to say what similarity between tunes might mean to a musician (… please tell me) , but I guess it can somewhat be boiled down to the number of replacements on tune1 to get to tune2 (possibly one needs to exclude some tunes that are too awkward using a Regexp search first). This is what Levenstein distance ([Levenshtein distance - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance)) and the diff/lcs algorithms do. A Ruby implementation of Levenstein distance is here: [http://rubyforge.org/projects/text](http://rubyforge.org/projects/text) Diff/LCS is implemented here: [http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/diff-lcs/](http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/diff-lcs/) Best regards, Axel ---
**Author:** ![lunatic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/73ab20/32.png) [@lunatic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/lunatic)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2007, 5:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/music-notation-abc/123656/3 "2007-12-19T17:49:35Z")
Lunatic D. wrote: > Here is a linl about ABC notation: [http://www.walshaw.plus.com/abc/](http://www.walshaw.plus.com/abc/) > > Thanks for informations and afflicted to make you undergo my aglais. No, there isn’t any ABC notation package available AFAIK. But it would be extremely easy to do one, since the format itself isn’t very advanced or complicated. If you want to do a ABC parser, you should make a header loader and a tune loader. And for each loaded section in the header, do syntax check of the input specific to that section. But before you begin, make sure you are a master of regular expressions (as Axel already said), it’s the foundation of parsing text. FWIW, I’m writing a MusicXML library for Ruby. The package should be available sometime very early next year as a gem. Best regards, Jari W. ---
**Author:** ![lunatic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/73ab20/32.png) [@lunatic](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/lunatic)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2007, 7:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/music-notation-abc/123656/4 "2007-12-19T19:28:58Z")
Jari W. wrote: > FWIW, I’m writing a MusicXML library for Ruby. The package should be > available sometime very early next year as a gem. ok, thanks to Axel and jari! First you confirm that there is probably nothing about ABC in ruby and I think it is a good thing to do this:) Second a musicXML parser will be very interersting too: ABC is generaly used by trad musician peoples and I hop that the stat of the norm is certanly larger than the usage need. a musicXML parser will permit to write some tools between the ABC world and tools like “finale” ABC2musicXML and musiXML2ABC with the ability to choice the granuralirity of details you want to get. Then there are tools to complète graphicaly like “finale” or print directly from tune or tune list if more simple… and there is “lilypond”… Ok I retrn to ruby and regular expressions 😉 regards,