ReadMe.txt for Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm Reference Implementation © 2024 Unicode®, Inc. Unicode and the Unicode Logo are registered trademarks of Unicode, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. For terms of use and license, see https://www.unicode.org/terms_of_use.html Version 16.0.0 (for UBA Version 16.0.0) Code Release Date: September 25, 2024 Documentation Update: September 25, 2024 Author: Ken Whistler The UBA Reference Implementation is furnished in three forms: 1. A generic Windows 64-bit executable (bidiref.exe). 2. Platform-independent source code, which can be compiled for an executable to run on almost any modern platform. 3. A compiled Windows 64-bit library (libbidir.lib) and a short public header file (bidiref.h) defining a simple API. The executable form can be used as a means of testing UBA implementations for conformance, in a context where the developers of such implementations are prohibited from viewing source code which is under Open Source or other open licenses. The source code is distributed, under the general Unicode Character Database terms of use and license (see https://www.unicode.org/copyright.html), both for the purpose of enabling compilation on any required platform and as a general model for other implementations, to assist in correct interpretation of the rather complicated steps of the specification of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm in UAX #9. The API can be used to execute the UBA reference algorithm on a single input string and check the results. This may be useful in building test frameworks which systematically compare another implementation against this reference implementation, or for applications which simply want to check or illustrate behavior in particular cases. The source code for this reference implementation is written in C, and is intended to complement the independent Java implementation of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm: https://www.unicode.org/Public/PROGRAMS/BidiReferenceJava/ These two reference implementations sponsored by the Unicode Consortium have been developed completely independently, by engineers with no access to each others' source code. The fact that these two, independent implementations in different programming languages are known to produce identical output for identical input and to pass all current conformance tests for the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm is a confidence measure for the correctness of the algorithm and of the reference implementations themselves. This bidiref implementation is deliberately didactic and non-optimized. No attempt has been made to use compact data structures or to piggyback or shortcircuit rules in clever ways to save space or increase performance. The emphasis is on literal, step-by-step implementation of the rules of the UBA, so that the relationship between each rule in the specification and its implementation in code is as clear as possible. Although this reference implementation does not attempt to be particularly compact or efficient, it is architected in such a way as to minimize superfluous reallocations and copying of data, in part to point the way to implementation strategies which *would* be more efficient. The bidiref implementation supports multiple versions of UBA rules, and an effort has been made to keep the expression of each version as parallel as possible. In particular the explicit differences between UBA 6.2.0 and UBA 6.3.0, which are structurally significant, are highlighted in the implementation. Where the logic of the rule application does not differ in principle, the actual implementation in code is abstracted, so that the shared rule logic is also a shared function in the code for each version. Where rules are distinct in their logic, the rule tracing makes it obvious where UBA 6.3.0-specific (or later) rules are distinct from their UBA 6.2.0 analogues. The 6.3.0 version of the bidiref implementation was augmented for Unicode 7.0, to enable testing with the Unicode 7.0 UCD data files and conformance test files. UBA 7.0.0 makes use of an identical rule set as for UBA 6.3.0, as the specification did not change between Version 6.3.0 and Version 7.0.0. Further augmentations have also been made for Unicode 8.0. In UBA 8.0.0, there are significant changes to a number of rules, to deal with edge cases in the algorithm. However, these do not change the overall structure of the algorithm, and so are generally specified simply with branches inside the rule implementations for UBA 6.3.0. Subsequent versions use the same rule set as for UBA 8.0.0, but update the repertoire to cover the corresponding versions of the Unicode Standard. Tracing and debug output is provided, particularly for the more difficult and complex rules that involve stack handling in the specification. This makes it easier to visualize how the rules are applied, step-by-step, in complicated cases. ======================================================================= Using bidiref.exe The bidiref reference algorithm is written as a command line utility program. This enables use for scripting in test harnesses of various sorts. The reference algorithm supports fully conformant UBA implementations, for all versions from UBA 6.2.0 through UBA 15.0.0. Command line flags currently supported are: -v The -v flag prints the version string and quits. -h The -h flag prints out a concise summary of command line usage and quits. -unn The -u flag allows choice of which UBA version to run (and which version data files to read). Valid values are -u62, -u63, -u70, -u80, -u90, -u100, -u110, -u120, -u130, -u140, -u150, -u151, and -u160. bidiref version 16.0 defaults to UBA 16.0.0 rules and data. -p path\ The -p flag, followed by a path string (after a space), sets a directory path which will be used for both property files and for test input files. If not set, bidiref will use the current directory for all files. The processing is not smart about appending a trailing path separator, so the trailing path separator should be explicitly included in the parameter string. The path can support either a fully-qualified path, or a relative path from the current directory. -x The -x flag sets the program to follow UBA 6.3.0 rules. (Equivalent to -u63. This flag is retained for compatibility with earlier revisions of the bidiref code.) -dn The -d flag allows setting of various levels of debug output. This value defaults to -d0, for no debug output. Additional levels supported are -d1, -d2, -d3, -d4, with each higher level providing more debug output. -c The -c flag turns on a continue-on-error flag, which enables continuation of processing to the next test case after a test case fails to match expected results. This flag defaults to off, in which case bidiref will terminate execution after the first test failure. -z The -z flag instructs the program to take an internally defined static string as input. This option is primarily intended as support for program development and testing, but can also be used as a simple way of producing sample output showing application of the UBA rules at various levels of debug output, to help in gaining an understanding of how that output works. If the -z flag is not specified, bidiref defaults to an input file named "BidiRefTest.txt", and attempts to read bidi test cases from that input file. Such test cases will be interpreted as using the test case format defined in BidiCharacterTest.txt in the UCD (see below). If the test cases do not follow that format, bidiref will report a parsing error and quit. When the -z flag is not specified, a fully qualified file name can be provided on the command line for an input file. bidiref will then attempt to read bidi test cases from that input file. Two distinct input file formats are supported. If an input file starts with the substring "BidiTest", then the file format is interpreted as the test case format of BidiTest.txt in the UCD. That test format does not use code points, but instead specifies test cases as vectors of Bidi_Class values, and uses an abbreviation scheme with @-variables to specify expected levels and reordering results for grouped sets of test cases. (See BidiTest.txt in the UCD for full details.) If the input file has any other name not starting with the substring "BidiTest", then the file format is interpreted as the test case format of BidiCharacterTest.txt in the UCD. That format expresses test cases by sequences of Unicode code points, and puts each test case on a single line, using semicolon-delimited fields to separate the input string from the expected results fields. When using the format of BidiCharacterTest.txt, test case strings are explicitly represented as sequences of *code points*, in 4-6 hex digit format. They should not be expressed as UTF-16 code units, using surrogate pairs to represent supplementary characters. For example, input data such as: 0041 D800 DC00 0041;... would be interpreted as four code points , rather than as . To test input with supplementary characters, simply express the code points for them directly: 0041 10000 0041;... The bidiref implementation will not reject ill-formed input strings containing isolated surrogate code points, but users of the reference implementation should be aware that such data would be explicitly testing the behavior of UBA for ill-formed Unicode strings, and the reference implementation does not try to "guess" that the data is misrepresented UTF-16 sequences. Note that bidiref does not read version information internal to the test case files, nor does it attempt to guess specific versions of UBA heuristically, based on test case data. This behavior is deliberate, to allow the program to be run using any UBA version against exactly the same input test cases, without changing the input. This can facilitate comparison of results for interesting edge cases for which different UBA versions behave distinctly. Examples of usage: % bidiref Parse BidiRefTest.txt and run the UBA 16.0.0 rules on each test case, printing out results only, with no debug output. % bidiref -u63 -d1 Parse BidiRefTest.txt and run the UBA 6.3.0 rules on each test case, printing out results plus minimal debug output. % bidiref -x -d1 Equivalent to -u63 -d1, for backward compatibility. % bidiref -u70 -d1 Parse BidiRefTest.txt and run the UBA 7.0.0 rules (identical to UBA 6.3.0 rules) on each test case, printing out results plus minimal debug output, using Unicode 7.0 UCD data files, instead of Unicode 6.3 data. % bidiref -u80 -c Parse BidiRefTest.txt and run the UBA 8.0.0 rules on each test case, printing out results without debug output, using Unicode 8.0 UCD data files, instead of Unicode 6.3 data. If a test case fails, continue processing through all of the test cases. % bidiref -u63 -z -d2 Run the UBA 6.3.0 rules on the static string input test case and print out the results with medium debug output, showing the intermediate results of the application of each successive rule. % bidiref BidiTest.txt Parse BidiTest.txt and run the UBA 16.0.0 rules on each test case, printing out a summary of results only. % bidiref -u63 BidiTest.txt Parse BidiTest.txt and run the UBA 6.3.0 rules on each test case, printing out a summary of results only. Note that the BidiTest.txt conformance test files are very large, containing hundreds of thousands of individual test cases. Running bidiref on that data with any debugging level greater than zero will produce very voluminous output, indeed! Use sparingly. If you want to examine particular test cases in more detail, it is generally advisable to excerpt them out of BidiTest.txt into a separate smaller input file and then use that small file as input for bidiref. % bidiref -u63 -d2 BidiTestSmallSet2.txt Parse BidiTestSmallSet2.txt, using the format of BidiTest.txt, run the UBA 6.3.0 rules on each test case, printing out the results with medium debug output, showing the intermediate results of the application of each successive rule. % bidiref -u100 -d3 BidiCharacterTest.txt Parse BidiCharacterTest.txt, using the format for test cases defined in that file, run the UBA 10.0.0 rules on each test case, printing out the results with a high level of debug output. % bidiref -d4 MyOwnTestCases.txt Parse MyOwnTestCases.txt, using the format specified for BidiCharacterTest.txt, run the (default) UBA 16.0.0 rules on each test case, printing out the results with the most verbose level of debug output. % bidiref -d4 -p c:\test\100test\ MyOwnTestCases.txt Parse MyOwnTestCases.txt, using the format specified for BidiCharacterTest.txt, run the (default) UBA 16.0.0 rules on each test case, printing out the results with the most verbose level of debug output. Bidiref will look for UnicodeData.txt and BidiBrackets.txt in the c:\test\100test\ directory, and will also look for MyOwnTestCases.txt in that same directory. % bidiref -u110 -p mytest\ MyOwnTestCases.txt Parse MyOwnTestCases.txt, using the format specified for BidiCharacterTest.txt, run the UBA 11.0.0 rules on each test case, printing out only the testresults. Bidiref will look for UnicodeData-11.0.0.txt and BidiBrackets-11.0.0.txt in the .\mytest\ directory, and will also look for MyOwnTestCases.txt in that same directory. Trace Flags and Debug Levels bidiref has a number of trace flags built in. These are used to specify particular kinds of output. Currently, there is no support for turning on or off particular trace flags via command line arguments, but there are internal program functions which can do so. The trace flags supported (as of Version 16.0.0) are: Trace0 /* On by default: print UBA version and final test results */ Trace1 /* Trace main algorithm function entry. */ Trace2 /* Trace initialization code function entry. */ Trace3 /* Trace stack handling in X1-X8 */ Trace4 /* Additional debug output for X1-X8 */ Trace5 /* Trace run and sequence handling in X10 */ Trace6 /* Trace stack handling in N0 */ Trace7 /* Additional debug output for N0 */ Trace8 /* Trace reordering in L2 */ Trace9 /* Additional debug output for P2/P3 */ Trace10 /* Trace property file parsing. */ Trace11 /* Display all intermediate UBA results */ Trace12 /* Additional debug output for test parsing */ Trace13 /* Explicitly list each PASS result for tests */ Trace14 /* Omit vacuous rule application from display */ Trace15 /* On by default: print error messages */ Currently those trace flags are automatically associated with the following debug levels: Debug Level Trace Flags 0 Trace0, Trace15 1 Trace1, Trace2 2 Trace11 3 Trace3, Trace5, Trace6, Trace8 4 Trace4, Trace7, Trace9, Trace12 Higher debug levels retain the trace flag settings of all lower debug levels. Test Case Limitations The longest test case input string currently supported is 200 characters long. (The longest length needed for any of the test cases in BidiTest.txt or BidiCharacterTest, as of Unicode 16.0, is 130 characters, but the longer input string length is provided to enable testing of arbitrary input for deeply embedded levels or deeply nested parenthesis pairs, for example.) UCD Property File Requirements The bidiref implementation does not make use of any library code (other than the standard C runtime library). In order to support UBA 6.3.0 (or later) rules and the BidiCharacterTest.txt format for test cases, the program needs access to UCD character properties. If a specific version is given on the command line, bidiref requires the following data files to be present. For UBA 6.2.0: UnicodeData-6.2.0.txt (renamed from Version 6.2.0 of UnicodeData.txt) For UBA 6.3.0: UnicodeData-6.3.0.txt (renamed from Version 6.3.0 of UnicodeData.txt) BidiBrackets-6.3.0.txt (renamed from Version 6.3.0 of BidiBrackets.txt) For UBA 7.0.0: UnicodeData-7.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 7.0.0 of UnicodeData.txt) BidiBrackets-7.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 7.0.0 of BidiBrackets.txt) For UBA 8.0.0: UnicodeData-8.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 8.0.0 of UnicodeData.txt) BidiBrackets-8.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 8.0.0 of BidiBrackets.txt) For UBA 9.0.0: UnicodeData-9.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 9.0.0 of UnicodeData.txt) BidiBrackets-9.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 9.0.0 of BidiBrackets.txt) For UBA 10.0.0: UnicodeData-10.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 10.0.0 of UnicodeData.txt) BidiBrackets-10.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 10.0.0 of BidiBrackets.txt) For UBA 11.0.0: UnicodeData-11.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 11.0.0 of UnicodeData.txt) BidiBrackets-11.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 11.0.0 of BidiBrackets.txt) For UBA 12.0.0: UnicodeData-12.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 12.0.0 of UnicodeData.txt) BidiBrackets-12.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 12.0.0 of BidiBrackets.txt) For UBA 13.0.0: UnicodeData-13.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 13.0.0 of UnicodeData.txt) BidiBrackets-13.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 13.0.0 of BidiBrackets.txt) For UBA 14.0.0: UnicodeData-14.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 14.0.0 of UnicodeData.txt) BidiBrackets-14.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 14.0.0 of BidiBrackets.txt) For UBA 15.0.0: UnicodeData-15.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 15.0.0 of UnicodeData.txt) BidiBrackets-15.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 15.0.0 of BidiBrackets.txt) For UBA 15.1.0: UnicodeData-15.1.0.txt (renamed from Version 15.1.0 of UnicodeData.txt) BidiBrackets-15.1.0.txt (renamed from Version 15.1.0 of BidiBrackets.txt) For UBA 16.0.0: UnicodeData-16.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 16.0.0 of UnicodeData.txt) BidiBrackets-16.0.0.txt (renamed from Version 16.0.0 of BidiBrackets.txt) Technically speaking, you only need the versions of these data files for the particular version of UBA you specify when starting bidiref, as the program only reads the one particular set of files for that version at the time of program invocation. If a datapath directory is specified on the command line, then bidiref will look for the corresponding UCD data files in the datapath directory instead of in the current directory. If the UBA version is not specified on the command line, but is allowed to default to the current version, then the data files that will be loaded will be ones without the version-specific suffixes: UnicodeData.txt BidiBrackets.txt If the datapath directory is specified on the command line, bidiref will also search for its test case input file in that same directory. Note that because bidiref does not make use of a library to obtain character property information, each invocation of bidiref from the command line parses the relevant property files (UnicodeData-6.2.0.txt when invoked for UBA 6.2.0, and UnicodeData-6.3.0.txt and BidiBrackets-6.3.0.txt when invoked for UBA 6.3.0, and so forth), to build up the internal tables of character properties required for running the UBA rules. As a result, if bidiref is to be used for validating many test cases, it is more efficient to stack all those test cases together into a single test case input file, rather than to invoke bidiref repeatedly at the command line for each individual test case. [Note: This architecture may be adjusted in a future revision of bidiref, to enable bidiref to cache all require property information in a precompiled set of tables, and to bypass the need to parse input data on each invocation.] =================================================================== Using the API The bidiref reference implementation is documented in the public header file bidiref.h. To build an application using this API, include bidiref.h in your source code, and then add a link to the static libbidir library. A compiled 64-bit version of the static library is provided for the Windows platform: libbidir.lib. This compilation is currently done with MSVC Version 12. If used to link with executables compiled with different compiler versions, it may be simpler to simply recompile the library from source. The API is very simple. An application must first call br_Init() *or* br_InitWithPath() [to set an explicit datapath] once (and only once) to set the UBA version and initialize the character property tables. If an explicit datapath is provided, the character property tables files will be sought in that specific location. Once the initialization call is done, an application can call br_ProcessOneTestCase() and/or br_QueryOneTestCase() as many times as it needs. There is no cleanup call necessary or provided. The initialization works with all static data structures built into the library, while the test case APIs automatically allocate and then deallocate any internal data structures they need on a per test case basis. All test data is passed in via one or the other of these API calls. No file parsing is done, and the application is responsible for setting up and marshaling the test data and accumulating any test results. Note: This API is *not* multithread safe, so a testing application should not attempt to multithread it for performance. Control over trace flags is also provided in the API via the calls TraceOn and TraceOff, using trace flags defined in bidiref.h. The API br_ProcessOneTestCase honors individual trace flags, so its execution can be tailored to show more or less output illustrating the steps and details of the processing. The API br_QueryOneTestCase also honors individual trace flags. To execute br_QueryOneTestCase without any console output, call TraceOffAll() first. This can be done to execute br_QueryOneTestCase repeatedly through a long list of test cases, without producing overwhelming amounts of output logging. =============================================================== Using the API Demo Program: bidirefdemo.exe A small demo program, bidirefdemo, is provided both in source code and compiled for Windows. This demo program illustrates how to use the API, using a single test case example. The source code can be used to compile the demo for any platform. To use bidirefdemo, simply execute it at a command line prompt with no arguments. It will print out output demonstrating br_ProcessOneTestCase with some program tracing on, and then print out a line indicating the successful execution of br_QueryOneTestCase, with no other output. Note that currently bidirefdemo has the same requirements as the bidiref program for the presence (and names) of the UnicodeData and BidiBracket property files in the current directory where it is executed (see above). =============================================================== Build Notes To build the bidiref executable from the source code, one can simply compile each of the source modules and link them all together. The basic dependency rule is just: bidiref : bidiref.c brinput.c brutils.c brtable.c brtest.c brrule.c To build the library to support use of the API, one can compile and link the last four modules into a static library. The basic dependency rule is just: libbidir : brutils.c brtable.c brtest.c brrule.c Then to build the bidiref executable, compile the first two modules and link them to the library: bidiref : bidiref.c brinput.c libbidir to build the bidiref1 executable, compile the bidiref1.c source and link it to the library: bidiref1 : bidiref1.c libbidir [The bidiref1 executable is a small support program intended for use with Java modules underlying the Bidi utility demonstration page at https://util.unicode.org/UnicodeJsps/bidic.jsp The bidi C reference implementation supports the "bidi-c" demonstration option on that page.] To build the bidirefdemo executable, compile the bidirefdemo.c source and link it to the library: bidirefdemo : bidirefdemo.c libbidir Similar approaches can then be taken to building your own test framework which makes use of the library API. Of course, it is also possible to build libbidir as a dynamic link library on most platforms, but that requires definition of the exports from the library. Note that bidiref.exe makes use of a number of exports which are not part of the publicly disclosed API defined in bidiref.h, so definition of all the correct exports is not as simple as it might seem. For the purposes to which this reference implementation would usually be put, it is simpler to just build and use static libraries.