Re: [xml-dev] Please stop writing specifications that cannot be parsed/processed by software
I wrote the first complete and AFAIK fully conforming XML parser, Lark, in Nov/Dec 1996 (Yeah, XML wasn’t quite finished yet) and it took several weeks, which annoyed me because I really had thought we’d managed to narrow it down enough to make it a one-week task.
On Jun 5, 2023 at 9:53:38 AM, Norman Gray <[email protected]> wrote:
Greetings,
On 5 Jun 2023, at 17:26, Debbie Lapeyre wrote:And my version of the Grad-student writes a parser story (ain't time and distance wonderful) was that the XML spec had promisedthat a 'reasonably competent graduate student' could write an XML parser in 3 days. And, near the end fo the spec process, a very bright grad student complained bitterly (and in jest) thathe COULDS NOT write one in 3 days, it had taken nearly 5.
My version of the story starts from a context where I wanted to take stuff from a parse of an XML document, but throw most of the parse away. I recall I did consider starting on doing this with sed, but after I had punched myself in the face for half-an-hour decided that a cut-down scanner would be smarter and educational. Three days later, I realised I'd written a large fraction of an XML parser by accident -- and the whitespace rules and, yes, unicode, were next on the list -- but that it would be much less fun and much more sensible to go with what should have been plan-0 and use a library instead.
The lessons being that yes, +1, an XML parser is not a massive challenge even for someone without a lot of parser experience, that whitespace is a problem, and (the thing I might be adding to this thread) that there isn't a cut-down 'this'll do' version of such a parser which is useful. That's a sort of minimalism.
Best wishes,
Norman
--
Norman Gray : https://nxg.me.uk
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
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