Nam Nguyen writes:
Since my final exam was done this weekend, I gathered some more info into this spreadsheet.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TlWSf8iM7eIzEPXanJAP8Ztyzt4ZD28xFvUK...
This is useful!
Most grammars I have seen here come straight from RFCs,
Grammars are only truly relevant if you have a parser-compiler for them. Otherwise, you're still translating by hand. See following discussion of urlsplit, which has issues #30500 and #36216 etc.
which are in ABNF and thus context-free. Current implementations are based on regexes or string splitting. My previous example showed that at least 30500, 36216, 36742 were non-issues if we started out with a strict parser.
For #30500, I don't recall you dealing with the claim that the parse is not for RFC 3986 URIs, but for a sort of "raw URI" which might not be percent-encoded. (AFAICT, RFC 3986 taken strictly restricts proper URIs to a subset of ASCII.) In that case, the translation would not be straightforward. This understanding is supported by #36216, which refers to IDNA. It's possible that urlsplit is intended to deal with RFC 3987 IRIs, but I tend to the view that it's just unclear. ;-)
that sheet are still open. It's not comfortable to say the code is working with a straight face as I have experienced with my own fix for 30500. I just couldn't tell if it was doing the right thing.
If it's just a straight implementation of RFC 3986, that shouldn't be too hard.
How do I, for example, know what this regex is about
^(([^:/?#]+):)?(//([^/?#]*))?([^?#]*)(\?([^#]*))?(#(.*))?
from RFC 3986?
By rewriting it as uri = r"""^(?: ([^:/?#]+): # group 1, optional scheme )?(?: //([^/?#]*) # group 2, optional authority )? ([^?#]*) # group 3, optional path (?: \?([^#]*) # group 4, optional query )?(?: #(.*) # group 5, optional fragment )?$""" (where I've revised it to use non-capturing groups and explicitly continue to end-of-string) and compiling with re.VERBOSE, or some similar device. An experienced Pythonista will likely do a double-take at group 3, then realize that "path" is a component that isn't delimited by a reserved character. Note that this regexp assumes a string containing no characters outside of the ASCII subset defined in the RFC! I'm not sure which is easier to read, this or the rather long grammar of RFC 3986 (or the even longer grammar of RFC 3897).
Absolutely. That's where I need inputs from the list. I have provided my own set of requirements for such a parser library. I'm sure most of us have different needs too. So if a parser library can help you, let's hear what you want from it.
I believe you've already heard from the people on this list who care. Its members are active participants, mostly. Its lurkers are frequently core devs who figure if it gets traction they will give their input on -dev. I think a better place to take a poll like this would be python-list@python.org. Steve