QB Answer Checker

A package to automatically check/judge answers against quizbowl answerlines. Mostly used in conjunction with qbreader to automatically check answers.

Usage

Import the checkAnswer function as the default import from src/check-answer.js:

import checkAnswer from "./src/check-answer.js";
checkAnswer("<b><u>1921</u></b>", 1921);
// output: { directive: 'accept', directedPrompt: undefined }

Alternatively, use a CDN like JSDelivr to serve the site to a browser:

import checkAnswer from "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/qb-answer-checker/dist/main.mjs";

Answerline Specification

This section specifies the kind of (quizbowl) answerlines that the program is designed to parse.

Answerlines should be formatted as follows:

<main section> [<sub-section>] [<sub-section>]? ...

where each section is a string of clauses separated by semicolons of the form:

(<special directives>;)? <clause> (; <clause>; ...)?

where each clause is a string of answers separated by the word "or" of the form:

<directive>? (on)? <answer>((or|,) <answer>(or|,) <answer> ...)? (by asking|with <directed prompt>)?

Deprecated: answers can also be separated by commas instead of "or", but this is deprecated and serves mostly to support old answerlines.

Each directive should be one of:

• "accept"
• "prompt"
• "reject"
• "anti-prompt"
  • some sets use "antiprompt" (no hyphen)

and "on" and "by asking/with" are optional and indicate that there should be a directed prompt.

Special Directives

Special directives should be one of the following and affect the main answerline only:

• "accept either" or "accept any": accept any individual word of the main answer
  • For example, if the entire answerline is <b><u>Grover Underwood</u></b> [accept either], then "Grover", "Underwood", and "Grover Underwood" would be accepted.
• "prompt on partial": prompt on any individual word of the main answer
  • For example: <b><u>John</u></b> [prompt on partial] would prompt on "John" and "John Smith", but not "John Smithson".

Note: special directives should be the first phrase in the sub-answerline, but this program will recognize them anywhere in the sub-answerline.

Additional Info

For more information about how answerlines should be formatted, see https://minkowski.space/quizbowl/manuals/style/answerlines.html. Note that the linked guide is more useful for explaining how answerlines should be formatted from a sylistic/quizbowl sense, while this specification only describes how they should be formatted in a way that computers can understand.