COMPOUND – Normalize Compound Word Formatting

Status: Current

Purpose

Reimplements CLAN’s COMPOUND command, which normalizes compound word notation in CHAT files. In CHAT, compound words are joined with + (e.g., ice+cream). This command converts dash-joined compounds to the canonical plus notation.

Usage

chatter clan compound file.cha

Options

COMPOUND has no command-specific flags — only the input path positional and the optional shared -o/--output (default: stdout). The dash→plus normalization is unconditional: there is no --dash-to-plus switch in the current CLI.

Behavior

The transform walks all main-tier word nodes and converts dash-joined compounds to plus notation (e.g., ice-cream becomes ice+cream).

Operations performed:

• Normalize dash-joined compounds to plus notation: ice-cream -> ice+cream
• Preserves filler prefixes (&-uh) and omission prefixes (0word)
• Only converts when all parts are purely alphabetic

The transform recurses into annotated words, replacement forms, groups, and annotated groups.

Differences from CLAN

• Operates on AST rather than raw text.
• Uses the framework transform pipeline (parse -> transform -> serialize -> write).