test-pmc-index

name	test-pmc-index
description	Use when validating a local PMC archive/index configured through `EDIRECT_LOCAL_ARCHIVE` by round-tripping random PMC records through `xfetch` and `xsearch`.
disable-model-invocation	true
user-invocable	true

test-pmc-index

EDirect shell smoke test for a local PMC archive. It generates random PMC-style IDs, fetches records from the local archive with xfetch -db pmc, extracts titles, then uses xsearch -db pmc -title to see whether the same records are findable through the local index.

Quick Start

• Command: test-pmc-index
• Local executable: /home/vimalinx/miniforge3/envs/bio/bin/test-pmc-index
• Critical environment: EDIRECT_LOCAL_ARCHIVE

When To Use This Tool

• Checking whether a local PMC archive/index is wired up well enough for title-based lookup
• Validating xfetch and xsearch behavior against a prepared PMC local archive
• Troubleshooting an EDIRECT_LOCAL_ARCHIVE PMC installation rather than the public PMC service
• Running a quick title-roundtrip consistency test on archived PMC records

Common Patterns

# Run against the configured local archive
export EDIRECT_LOCAL_ARCHIVE=/path/to/local/archive
test-pmc-index

# Capture the diagnostic output
export EDIRECT_LOCAL_ARCHIVE=/path/to/local/archive
test-pmc-index > pmc-index-check.txt

# Time the run externally if needed
export EDIRECT_LOCAL_ARCHIVE=/path/to/local/archive
time test-pmc-index

Recommended Workflow

1. Set EDIRECT_LOCAL_ARCHIVE to a real local archive root before running the test.
2. Run test-pmc-index with no arguments.
3. Inspect OKAY, MULT, NONE, TRIM, SKIP, or FAIL lines to understand how well title-based lookup matches fetched records.
4. Fix the local archive/index configuration first if the script emits path or rchive errors before the record checks start.

Guardrails

• -h and --version are not safe metadata paths. They were treated like normal execution in this environment and immediately fell into configuration/runtime errors.
• Without EDIRECT_LOCAL_ARCHIVE, the script printed ERROR: Must supply path to local data by setting EDIRECT_LOCAL_ARCHIVE environment variable and then still emitted an Insufficient command-line arguments supplied to rchive error before ending.
• The source shows no argument parsing at all; it always runs the same random-ID roundtrip test.
• This test depends on a working local PMC archive/index, not just network access.