Roll-Your-Own Parsers (was: Re: What Clean Specs Achieve)

[Simon St.Laurent]

Hugh wrote:
>There will always be a tradeoff between code size,
>performance and conformance to the spec.  We have taken the same approach:
>for XML which might go outside our environment or some in from outside, we
>use a heavyweight parser with full validation.  But where it's "behind the
>covers" we use a homegrown (tiny, nonconformant) parser and just check the
>structures a few times during design, with a validating parser.

If we could work with parser layers rather than parsers, this might become
a lot easier to manage.  We could just turn on the parts we need and turn
off the ones we don't. 

I'm hoping to build an open and extensible parser based on the approach I'm
outlining in that "Layered Model for XML Processing" document
(http://www.simonstl.com/articles/layering/layered.htm) over the summer.
Open source, open architecture, open model.  It'll be event-based for now,
maybe with a tree-builder at the end.

Tilting at windmills, a glorious hobby.

Simon St.Laurent
XML: A Primer / Building XML Applications (April)
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http://www.simonstl.com

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