twic_script

A bash script to maintain an updated SCID database of chess games downloaded from The Week In Chess (TWIC)

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This simple bash script helps maintaining an updated database of chess games for SCID, based on the famous "The Week In Chess" game collection made available at

http://www.theweekinchess.com/

Games are distributed as zipped png files, which are uploaded weekly on http://www.theweekinchess.com/zips/ (Should that URL change at some point in the future, you will just need to update the ADDR variable below)

SYNOPSIS

 ./twic_script.sh --help

 ./twic_script.sh [<start_issue> [<end_issue> [<pgnfile>]]]

When called with "--help" as first argument, the script outputs a minimal help.

Otherwise, if called with a start_issue (an integer, default to the first issue to be downloaded, as specified into ${IDFILE}, or to the first known online issue of TWIC, number 210, if ${IDFILE} does not exist), it will start downloading the TWIC issues from start_issue up to the latest (or up to end_issue, if provided). The zips are stored into ${ZIPDIR} (default to "./zips"), while the png database is maintained into ${PNGFILE} (default to ${DBDIR}/twic.png), or into the file provided by the user as third argument.

The new pgn files are concatenated at the end of ${PNGFILE}, and then the SCID database is rebuilt (this can take a while...).

The script maintains a record of the last downloaded issue, into the file ${IDFILE} (default to ${ZIPDIR}/.last_id), so that it is sufficient to call it regularly (e.g., as a user cron job) with no arguments in order to have an updated DB of chess games.

DEPENDENCIES

twic_script.sh depends on:

• wget (to download the zip files)
• unzip (well, what do you think we are using it for?)
• pgnscid (a program provided by scid to convert a pgn file into a SCID .si4 game DB)

**** IMPORTANT NOTE ****

BEWARE!!! IF YOU REMOVE ${PNGFILE}, THE CORRESPONDING SCID DB FILE WILL BE OVERWRITTEN BY THE FIRST RUN OF THIS SCRIPT!!!

**** DISCLAIMER ****

THIS SCRIPT USES AND AGGREGATES ONLY PUBLICLY AVAILABLE PGN FILES. THIS PROJECT IS NOT RELATED IN ANY WAY TO THE WEBSITE "TWIC - THE WEEK IN CHESS", WHICH IS CREATED AND MAINTAINED BY Mark Crowther. THE BEST WAY TO SUPPORT THIS PROJECT (WHICH DOES NOT NEED THAT MUCH EFFORT INDEED) IS BY SUPPORTING "THE WEEK IN CHESS" (http://www.theweekinchess.com) AND ITS CREATOR Mark Crowther, WHO HAS DONE A GREAT JOB PUTTING TOGETHER A SUPERB CHESS WEBZINE.