Re: [xml-dev] Parsing XML with anything but

[Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>]

On Mon, 2013-12-09 at 21:39 -0500, Amelia A Lewis wrote:
> [...] Anyone who uses 
> regular expressions for a grammar that relies extensively on parity is 
> either stupid or poorly trained.

The "desperate perl hacker" was a significant and much-discussed use
case during XML development, and was part of why we chose a self-evident
empty element syntax.

Use of regular expressions does not need to be evidence of stupidity,
nor of poor training.  I admit to using regular expressions to process
XML at times myself, although I also suppose that since I haven't
received a whole lot of introductory XML training I'm poorly trained in
XML...

Absence of carefulness is a problem, but that can be a problem with any
tool.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
The barefoot programmer