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Re: parsing markup with Perl

• From: Arjun Ray <arjun.ray@verizon.net>
• To: "xml-dev@lists.xml.org" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 16:08:52 -0500

On Fri, 07 Feb 2014 12:42:17 -0500, "Simon St.Laurent"
<simonstl@simonstl.com> wrote:

| More fun for the crowd here.

Ah yes, the usual and predictable Perl Hatefest.  (Disclaimer: I wrote
my first Perl program in 1992, the latest one a week ago, and I apply
inliners daily.)

No doubt there is bad, if not very bad, Perl code out there, in great
abundance. Perl is *NIX-y that way, being not really interested in
protecting the less-than-proficient user from stupidity.  But if you
know what you're doing, Perl is an extraordinarily versatile tool.  

That said, it is certainly poor - no, make that egregious - Perl
practice to use regexes to parse markup.  As the article linked to
makes clear, that's a solved problem already - there is no excuse not
to use modules.

In fact, that applies to practically any language being used today to
wrestle with pointy-bracketed text, with the possible exception of
PHP.  Which, as has also been noted in this thread, may be the real
source of the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth: that regexes are
*still* being used for one-off markup parsing tasks.
 
But why blame Perl, other than it's the language eveyone loves to
hate?  (Actually, I thought that would be C++.)

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: parsing markup with Perl
    • From: Michael Sokolov <msokolov@safaribooksonline.com>

• References:
  • parsing markup with Perl
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>