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Examples and Recipes

The examples are small standalone consumers of an installed libscid package. They double as concept guides: each one introduces a narrow C ABI workflow and keeps the surrounding project structure minimal.

Install libscid first, then configure the example tree with CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH pointing at the installation prefix:

cmake -S examples -B _build/examples -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=install/libscid
cmake --build _build/examples
ctest --test-dir _build/examples --output-on-failure

The same examples are included in release archives under share/doc/libscid/examples.

Language Bindings (Python)

  • examples/python/010-edit-pgn: parse, inspect, edit header tags, and export PGN.
  • examples/python/020-author-pgn: author games with moves, comments, NAGs, and variations.
  • examples/python/030-navigate-pgn: traverse variation trees with Cursor and iterate movetext.
  • examples/python/040-position-and-arbiter: position analysis, legal moves, and arbitral draw claims.
  • examples/python/050-list-database: database opening, metadata inspection, and filter pagination.
  • examples/python/060-search-database: header criteria, position, and board pawn structure search.

Games, Positions And PGN

  • examples/c/010-edit-pgn: parse, inspect, edit and write a PGN game.
  • examples/c/020-author-pgn: author a PGN game with moves, comments, NAGs and a variation, then export both default PGN and an options-controlled mainline form.
  • examples/c/030-nonstandard-start: create a game from a FEN start position with scid_game_create_blank() and export it.
  • examples/c/040-navigate-pgn: navigate mainline moves and variations with immutable game cursors.
  • examples/c/050-position-and-moves: apply moves to a position, inspect the resulting state, and enumerate legal moves.
  • examples/c/060-mutate-pgn: edit move metadata and merge a source game's moves as a variation in an existing PGN game with scid_game_merge_moves().

Databases

  • examples/c/080-memory-database: create an in-memory database and list a filtered game.
  • examples/c/090-list-database: list database games using lightweight metadata calls.
  • examples/c/100-edit-database: replace games and toggle the deleted marker.
  • examples/c/110-persistent-database: create, close and reopen a SCID5 database.
  • examples/c/120-import-export-pgn: import and export PGN through a database. Database export uses the default PGN policy; custom export options are available by loading the game and calling scid_game_to_pgn().

ECO

  • examples/c/070-eco-lookup: load an ECO book and classify a position.

Fixtures

The examples use small fixtures under examples/fixtures:

  • dr-lasker/dr-lasker.{si5,sg5,sn5}: a compact SCID5 database.
  • import.pgn: PGN input used by the import example.
  • mini.eco: a small ECO book.
  • mini.ssp: a small spelling file.

These fixtures are intentionally tiny and are part of the release examples so that the example test suite can run without external chess data.