xml-dev - Re: parsing XML using regular expressions

[Simon Carter <simon_carter@splwg.com>]

> We have occasional battles here about the wisdom of using
> non-XML-parser-based tools to process XML, and regular expressions always
> seem to come up.
>
> I've got a reader question that sort of ties into a (non-regex-based) Java
> project I'm working on, about the viability of regex and other text-based
> processing for XML work.
>
> Has anyone written a generic XML parser, even a somewhat broken one,
that's
> built on regular expressions?  I remember hearing of something a long
while
> ago, but I can't find it.
>
> I'm not concerned with the efficiency/viability/profitability/wisdom of
> such a solution, just whether or not it's been done - especially if it's
> available open source.

Hi Simon,

My application TextPipe (http://www.crystalsoftware.com.au) performs shallow
parsing on XML documents up to 2GB
in size. Once a regexp match has been found, TextPipe allows the matching text
to be matched by further regexps
or be transformed in other ways, such as edit-distance or sounds-like
search/replaces, user-written code etc.

It can also query databases for data in XML, fixed width and CSV formats which
can be further processed, and even sent
on to other databases.

Regards,

Simon Carter
--
End Hours Wasted Manually Editing Data / Text with TextPipe

http://www.crystalsoftware.com.au
Other products: LFNit!, DirSize, BabyShield, DirDate, ZeroIn, Arc Menu,
ClipSize, Clean 'n' Go