Programmatically converting/parsing LaTeX code to plain text

Question

I have a couple of code projects in C++/Python in which LaTeX-format descriptions and labels are used to generate PDF documentation or graphs made using LaTeX+pstricks. However,

Answer 1

I understand this is an old post, but since this post comes up often in latex-python-parsing searches (as evident by Extract only body text from arXiv articles formatted as .tex), leaving this here for folks down the line: Here's a LaTeX parser in Python that supports search over and modification of the parse tree, https://github.com/alvinwan/texsoup. Taken from the README, here is sample text and how you can interact with it via TexSoup.

from TexSoup import TexSoup
soup = TexSoup("""
\begin{document}

\section{Hello \textit{world}.}

\subsection{Watermelon}

(n.) A sacred fruit. Also known as:

\begin{itemize}
\item red lemon
\item life
\end{itemize}

Here is the prevalence of each synonym.

\begin{tabular}{c c}
red lemon & uncommon \\
life & common
\end{tabular}

\end{document}
""")

Here's how to navigate the parse tree.

>>> soup.section  # grabs the first `section`
\section{Hello \textit{world}.}
>>> soup.section.name
'section'
>>> soup.section.string
'Hello \\textit{world}.'
>>> soup.section.parent.name
'document'
>>> soup.tabular
\begin{tabular}{c c}
red lemon & uncommon \\
life & common
\end{tabular}
>>> soup.tabular.args[0]
'c c'
>>> soup.item
\item red lemon
>>> list(soup.find_all('item'))
[\item red lemon, \item life]

Disclaimer: I wrote this lib, but it was for similar reasons. Regarding the post by Little Bobby Tales (regarding def), TexSoup doesn't handle definitions.