Re: Data table text I/O package?

[Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:

> There is a better technique to parse strings than to tokenize them first.
> Get rid of scanner. Just take the date from the current position of the
> string and advance the position to the first character following the date.
> Because the procedure that gets the date knows the format it also knows
> where the date ends. It can also support various concurrent formats,
> provided that they are distinguishable. This way you can parse a string
> virtually knowing nothing about the formats of its fields. An additional
> advantage is that error messages (if it comes to a more advanced system)
> will be pretty easy to generate.

IIUC, what you describe is a (more binary) DTD, either language-standardised
or proprietary.

And also, what does the sentence "don't scan a string, and don't
produce tokens, but advance [something] to the first character
following the date that was taken[?] form the string" mean,
other than a contradiction in terms?