From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,45d3652405dab08f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-07-03 21:54:42 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!cyclone.bc.net!newsfeed.bc.tac.net!news.bc.tac.net!not-for-mail Sender: blaak@blight.transcend.org Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Regular expressions??? References: From: Ray Blaak Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.7 Date: 03 Jul 2001 21:53:37 -0700 NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.34.170.123 X-Complaints-To: news@bctel.net X-Trace: news.bc.tac.net 994222469 207.34.170.123 (Tue, 03 Jul 2001 21:54:29 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 21:54:29 PDT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:9410 Date: 2001-07-03T21:53:37-07:00 List-Id: Emmanuel Briot writes: > It was noted earlier than an XML parser is much easier to program than a RE > parser. Obviously, this is true. However, writing a parser from scratch is > actually not so simple, since the XML standard is pretty extensive. Support > for entities (&name;), DTDs, ... was kind of a time-consuming task :-) True enough. However, a simple XML parser that ignores encodings, validation, and entities is still useful enough to process a significant number of files (i.e. most files are in ASCII, don't use &entities too much, and grammars are irrelevant to final client side processing that needs the grammars "built in" to the evaluation code anyway). Certainly such a thing is good enough for educational purposes, and for "private" application storage formats. Regular expressions however, are quickly erroneous with the slightest preturbation of the data, due to the free form nested nature of XML. -- Cheers, The Rhythm is around me, The Rhythm has control. Ray Blaak The Rhythm is inside me, blaak@infomatch.com The Rhythm has my soul.