Mathematica Programming » Assorted Tricks
Info Scraping
Mathematica, being so symbolic, is a particularly easy language to scrape and get information from, particularly given the rich pattern language it supports.
Because of this, we can learn a lot by simply pulling relevant info from the source files of the program. First we need a way to get the source files:
internalFiles[namePattern_,directoryExtensions___,depth:_Integer|∞:∞]:=
FileNames[namePattern,
FileNameJoin@{
$InstallationDirectory,
directoryExtensions
},
depth];
Then we can pull things from these according to a pattern:
expressionsSearch[pat_,files__]:=
Table[
f->Quiet@
Cases[
Switch[FileExtension@f,
"m"|"wl",
Import[f,"HeldExpressions"],
_,
Import[f]
],
pat,
∞
],
{f,Replace[Hold[files],
Except@Hold[_List]⧴internalFiles[files]
]}
]//DeleteDuplicates;
We’ll use this to figure out how CurrentValue
is used in Mathematica’s built-in stylesheets:
Join@@Last/@expressionsSearch[c:_CurrentValue⧴HoldForm[c],
"*.nb","SystemFiles","FrontEnd","StyleSheets"]//DeleteDuplicates//Sort
{CurrentValue["ControlsFontFamily"],CurrentValue["ControlsFontSize"],CurrentValue["HyperlinkModifierKey"],CurrentValue["MenuFontFamily"],CurrentValue["MenuFontSize"],CurrentValue["MouseOver"],CurrentValue["PanelBackground"],CurrentValue["PanelFontFamily"],CurrentValue["PanelFontSize"],CurrentValue["ShiftKey"],CurrentValue["ToolbarBackground"],CurrentValue["TooltipFontFamily"],CurrentValue["TooltipFontSize"],CurrentValue["TooltipFrameMargins"],CurrentValue[Enabled],CurrentValue[Evaluatable],CurrentValue[{"SystemColor","DialogText"}],CurrentValue[{"SystemColor","DialogTextDisabled"}],CurrentValue[{"SystemColor","Menu"}],CurrentValue[{"SystemColor","MenuText"}],CurrentValue[{"SystemColor","Tooltip"}],CurrentValue[{"SystemColor","TooltipFrame"}],CurrentValue[{"SystemColor","TooltipText"}],CurrentValue[{StyleHints,"CodeFont"}],CurrentValue[EvaluationNotebook[],WindowElements],CurrentValue[EvaluationNotebook[],WindowMargins],CurrentValue[EvaluationNotebook[],WindowSize],CurrentValue[EvaluationNotebook[],{AutoStyleOptions,"StringStyle"}],CurrentValue[EvaluationNotebook[],{TaggingRules,"ExampleCounter"}],CurrentValue[EvaluationNotebook[],{TaggingRules,"SlideShowSettings","WindowSize"}]}
There’s a lot of info in the source files and by doing things like this you can mine a lot of it.