How to make a pgn database on mac?

Sort:
DallasCarter808

Hi :)

Ive downloaded the pgn files for many games ive played and id like to put them together in one database. Any way to do that on a Mac? Ive tried PGN viewer and ChessX but I cant figure out how to add games to a database.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide ;) 

GMPatzer

Use SCID Chess (http://scid.sourceforge.net/) free download                    make a new database and import the games thru Tools and Import file of pgn games

axelmuller

Hi, I just posted this earlier somewhere else:

 

pgn files are just well organized text files. I find it a bit cumbersome to open a sophistaced GUI such as Chess Explorer just to combine databases. In Macs and of course in Linux the terminal can be used easily and to great effect. A handful of unix commands make the creation of a masterdatabase very easy. For example you can download all TWIC pgn files, then navigate with the terminal to this directory, eg:

cd /Users/yourhomedirectory/Downloads

and then simply combine them with the cat command:

cat *.pgn > all_downloaded_pgns.pgn

PGN-EXTRACT by David Barnes (http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/djb/pgn-extract/) is a fantastic command line tool to generate smaller databases for your openings. 

These steps circumvent Hiarcs lack of big database support. Using a combination of simple Unix commands and pgn-extract would be still useful even if big databases were supported.

PS: For those windows-users: it might be a good idea to look into cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com) to bring the power of the commandline to windows.