[XML-SIG] parsers and XML, note re: xmlpickle

Thu, 10 Aug 2000 19:22:38 -0500 (CDT)

> A processor that checks for correct syntax and stops there is still a
> "parser", as is a tree-builder

Validating parsers definitely qualify as "real" parsers.
DOM stuff definitely qualifies as a parser.

I guess I should have singled out "event-driven XML parsers" as
a misnomer.  I didn't mean to disparage the others.

> or a event-stream generator.

Event-stream generators emit events which loosely map to tokens.
That is, "<HEAD>foo</HEAD>" comes out as start_tag('HEAD'),
character_data('foo'), end_tag('HEAD').  They don't appear to do anything
related to the structure of the HTML.  A lexer would generate
a token stream such as TOK_BEG(HEAD) STR(foo) TOK_END(HEAD).
I'm still awaiting an explanation of how these differ in any significant
way, but I'm tired of this thread and am not going to clarify again.

xmlpickle:

Incidentally, the "nested data structure" comments are imminently
relevant to XML pickling.  Do you really want to re-code a parser stack,
reduction dispatch routines and child tree access code for every such
application?  Nor would you necessarily want to read it all and generate
an AST in memory.
-- 
Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot,
    are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.
       - George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824)