cwcomment: Comment extractor

cwcomment extracts comments from play-by-play event files. It has no DiamondWare equivalent. The tool can be used alongside cwevent to retain information which appears in com records rather than in play records.

cwcomment outputs up to 10 fields. All fields are included by default; the fields generated can be selected with the -f command-line option. The other common command-line options are described in the command-line options table.

cwcomment field numbers

Field number	Description	Header
0	Game ID	GAME_ID
1	Event number	EVENT_ID
2	Comment text	COMMENT_TX
3	ID of person ejected	EJECT_PERSON_ID
4	Role of person ejected	EJECT_PERSON_ROLE_CD
5	ID of ejecting umpire	EJECT_UMPIRE_ID
6	Reason for ejection	EJECT_REASON_TX
7	Inning of umpire change	UMPCHANGE_INN_CT
8	Position assumed by umpire	UMPCHANGE_POS_CD
9	ID of umpire assuming position	UMPCHANGE_PERSON_ID

Association with events

Comments which occur before the first play of a game have an EVENT_ID of 0. Other comments are associated with the play which precedes them and normally have the same EVENT_ID as that play in cwevent output. A comment attached to an NP (no play) record receives the number of the most recent event, because the NP record does not itself increment the event number.

Grouping of comments

A consecutive series of ordinary comments attached at the same point in the game is combined into one output record. Their text is joined with spaces in COMMENT_TX.

Ejection and umpire-change comments are each emitted as separate records. They are not combined with adjacent comments. This preserves a one-to-one relationship between each structured comment and its parsed fields.

Structured comments

Retrosheet represents ejections and umpire changes using specially formatted comment text. cwcomment recognizes these records when COMMENT_TX begins with the corresponding prefix.

An ejection comment has the form:

ej,person_id,person_role,umpire_id,reason

Its components are reported in EJECT_PERSON_ID, EJECT_PERSON_ROLE_CD, EJECT_UMPIRE_ID, and EJECT_REASON_TX.

An umpire-change comment has the form:

umpchange,inning,position,person_id

Its components are reported in UMPCHANGE_INN_CT, UMPCHANGE_POS_CD, and UMPCHANGE_PERSON_ID.

The structured fields which do not apply to a comment are blank. COMMENT_TX retains the complete comment text, including the structured prefix and comma-separated components.