LCCallNumber

Very simple attempt to work with Library of Congress Call Numbers (nee Classification Numbers). Includes simple getters/setters and a PEG parser.

• Normalization: create a string that can be compared with other normalized strings to correctly order the call numbers
• Much better testing

LC Call Numbers are used in libraries to classify and order books and other items.

Some (increasingly complex) samples are:

• A1
• A1.2 .B3
• A1.2 .B3 .C4
• A1.2 .B3 1990
• A1.2 1888 .B3 .C4 2000
• A1.2 .A54 21st 2010

The OCLC has a page explaining how LC Call Numbers are composed, which you should reference if you feel the need.

For purposes of this class, an LC Call Number consists of the following parts. Only the first two are required; everything else is optional.

• Letter(s). One or more letters.
• Digit(s). One or more digits, optionally with a decimal point.
• Doon1 (Date Or Other Number). [Note: no one but me calls it a 'doon', but I needed a term and there wasn't another]. Relatively rare as these things go, a DOON is used to represent the date the work is about (as opposed to, say, the year it was published) or, in some cases, an identifier for an army division or group (say, "12th" for the US Army Twelfth Infantry).
• First Cutter. The first "Cutter number," consisting of a letter followed by one or more digits. The first Cutter is always supposed to be preceded by a dot, but, you know, isn't always.
• Doon2. Another date or other number.
• "Extra" Cutters. The 2nd through nth Cutter numbers, lumped together because we don't have to worry about them getting interspersed with doons.
• Year. The year of publication.
• "Rest". Everything and anything else.

In general, you won't be building these things up by hand; you'll try to parse them.

Note that in the case below, while in theory this could be a callnumber with a single Cutter followed by a doon2 and no year, we presume the '1990' is a year and don't call it a doon.

require 'lc_callnumber'

lc = LCCallNumber.parse('A1.2 .B3 1990') #=> LCCallNumber::CallNumber
lc.letters #=> 'A'
lc.digits  #=> 1.2 (as a float for a float; int if there's no decimal)
lc.doon1   #=> nil
lc.firstcutter #=> Cutter<letter=>'B', digits=>'3', dot=>true>
lc.extra_cutters #=> []
lc.year      #=> 1990
lc.rest      #=> nil

lc = LCCallNumber.parse('A .B3') #=> LCCallNumber::UnparseableCallNumber
lc.valid? #=> false

a = LCCallNumber.parse("B 528.S43")
b = LCCallNumber.parse("B 528.S298")
a <=> b # -1

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'lc_callnumber'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install lc_callnumber

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new pull request