[Tutor] Reading and Manipulating XML Data

[Luis Galvan]

Being new to Python and programming, I'm having a very difficult time
studying and finding helpful (beginner) documentation on XML.  I'm at the
point where I have learned the syntax and am just starting to get my feet
wet with learning how to utilize it. (and by "utilizing it" I mean making
useful programs)  I've tackled a couple simple challenges by reading Mr.
Wesley Chun's fantastic book, Core Python Programming, but now I want to
move on to something a bit more ambitious where I don't necessarily have a
helping hand along the way.

A challenge I'm giving myself to further develop my programming skills is to
make a script that can read an XML file from a specific game that has its
own defined tags, etc and will allow you to manipulate the tags and their
child contents.  I've read about XML Parsing before and I'm hoping it can
help me achieve this goal, however, the definition of XML Parsing seams a
little foggy to me, which is where I need help.  The 'net always gives me an
exaggerated technical answer that is simply way over my head, so I'm asking,
does parsing mean to read and manipulate data?  If not, can someone provide
an answer in lay man's terms?

The last part of my question brings me back to the first part of this
message.  I can't seem to find any documentation on the internet that is
ideal to the beginning programmer regarding XML parsing.  There is either
scarce documentation on modules such as minidom or just too little of a
single article.  For example, I was looking at a small article the other day
teaching a little bit about parsing, but it was just so brief that it left
me wanting more.  You can't learn to bake a cake by forgetting the eggs,
milk, and flour!  Sorry for that horrible analogy, but I was hoping it would
compliment my rant nicely.

To make a long question short, what exactly is the complete definition of
parsing in lay man's terms (I'm pretty sure I get the idea anyway, I just
want to be sure) and what are some decent python xml parsing guides out
there?  Any help is much appreciated!
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