---
name: "sgmlpre"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "linuxdoc-tools"
version: "0.9.86-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/sgmlpre"
---

# sgmlpre(1)

handle SGML conditionalization for SGML-tools

## NAME

sgmlpre - handle SGML conditionalization for SGML-tools

## SYNOPSIS

**sgmlpre** *\[options\] ...*

## DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the **sgmlpre** commands. This manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program does not have a manual page for sgmlpre.

**sgmlpre** is a program that handle SGML conditionalization for SGML-tools

It is used by other programs in sgml-tools (v1), and usually normal user does not need to use this program directly by himself.

Following is quoted from the header in the source code.

- (Begin Quotes)

  **sgmlpre** -- handle SGML conditionalization for SGML-tools by Eric S. Raymond \<esr@thyrsus.com\>, 3 Nov 1997

  Filter SGML according to conditionalizing markup. Argument/value pairs from the command line are matched against the attributes of \<#if\> and \<#unless\> tags. Spans between \<#if\>/\</#if\> are passed through unaltered if there is no attribute mismatch; spans between \<#unless\>\</#unless\> are passed if there is at least one attribute mismatch. An attribute mismatch happens  if an attribute occurs in both the command-line arguments and the tag, but the values do not match. Value matching is by string equality, except that "\|" is interpreted as an alternation character. Even if a span is not passed through, its newlines are (this to avoid messing up the line  numbers in error messages).

  This lexer requires flex. Limitations; attribute names may only be 256 chars long, values may be only 16384 (YY\_BUF\_SIZE) characters long. Doesn't do checking that only \</if\> matches \<if\> and \</unless\> matches \<unless\> (that would need a stack and introduce another limit).

- (End Quotes)

  ## OPTIONS

The program does not support normal command line options.

## SEE ALSO

For a complete description, see the header in the source archive.

## AUTHOR

**sgmlpre** was written by Eric S. Raymond \<esr@thyrsus.com\>, 3 Nov 1997.

This manual page was written by Taketoshi Sano \<sano@debian.org\>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). Currently maintained by Agustin Martin \<agustin6martin AT gmail com\>.