Esteemed brethren,

I'm in the middle of writing a Parse::RecDescent module to handle ABC music files - reading them in, converting to other formats etc. The question is, how far should I go in providing 'helper' functions?

For instance, a 'convert-to-MIDI' function is obviously useful, but should this be "$tune->write_midi_file($filename)" or "@mididata = $tune->get_as_midi()", or both?

It goes as far as inputs too. ABC files can contain multiple tunes, comments etc. - it took a long time to decide between throwing a complete file at P::RD, and splitting the file up beforehand and just passing individual tunes to the parser. (I opted for the latter, but only because it seemd easier at the time - or I was still scared of P::RD :)).

Again though, should I bother providing a complete "my @tunes = read_file()" routine (thus duplicating the ubiquitous while(<FILE>) or should I just leave it at "my $tune = ABC->new($datalines)"?

Eagerly wating opinions
Ben

In reply to Limits of module functionality by benn

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