[BangPypers] parsing xml
Anand Balachandran Pillai
abpillai at gmail.com
Mon Aug 1 10:13:26 CEST 2011
On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 1:25 PM, Kiran Jonnalagadda <jace at pobox.com> wrote:
> On 31-Jul-2011, at 11:33 PM, Venkatraman S wrote:
>
> > A regex is the simplest IMHO, because you need not know the syntax of the
> > minidom parser.
> > But, again i have seen this quiet often that lack of knowledge of regexp
> has
> > led people to other solutions (the grapes are sour!)
>
> In the eternal words of Jamie Zawinski:
>
> """
> Some people, when confronted with a problem, think
> “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.
> """
>
> http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247
>
I had fun reading the following "quotes" :)
“Give a man a regular expression and he’ll match a string…
teach him to make his own regular expressions and you’ve got a man with
problems.”
–me_da_clever_one
“Give a man a regular expression and he’ll match a string… but by teaching
him how to create them, you’ve given him enough rope to hang himself” – Andy
Hood
>
> Please resist the temptation to use regexps for XML, for down that path
> lies only pain. It always starts with "oh, only one token? Let me use a
> regex and get done with it," and soon enough you have a little forest of
> random-looking characters.
>
Using regular expression to parse XML converts what is inherently
hierarchical data to linear, flat data. Therein lies all its problems.
>
> Kiran
>
> --
> Kiran Jonnalagadda
> http://jace.zaiki.in/
> http://hasgeek.in/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> BangPypers mailing list
> BangPypers at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/bangpypers
>
--
--Anand
More information about the BangPypers
mailing list