RE: [HACKERS] [OT] flex, yacc, and bison

I'm trying to write a ncftp_auth deamon that will utilize PostgreSQL.  The
base SDK is in C.  I'm adapting it to C++ because I feel like it, but Perl
would be a slightly steeper learning curve (sockets and all that).  I'm
trying to get a conf file parser such that the login's can be in multiple
database and/or on different machines.DEJ

> -----Original Message-----
> From:    Michael Alan Dorman [SMTP:mdorman-pgsql.hackers@debian.org]
> Sent:    Wednesday, August 18, 1999 4:46 PM
> To:    pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org
> Subject:    Re: [HACKERS] [OT] flex, yacc, and bison
> 
> Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:
> > "Jackson, DeJuan" <djackson@cpsgroup.com> writes:
> > > I need to parse this format:
> > > <Database ftpdatabase [hostname[:port]]>
> > >  [<DatabaseID somebody>]
> > >  [<DatabasePWD mypwd>]
> > >  [<Table ftp_users>
> > >   [<Uname uname>]
> > >   [<CryptedPwd cryptedpwd>]
> > >   [<FtpPath ftppath>]
> > >  </Table>]
> > > </Database>
> > 
> > That looks suspiciously like an SGML DTD to me...
> 
> Well, it could almost kind of be SGML, but as specified, there's no
> way it could possibly be XML (attributes have to have values, a couple
> of other things), which is unfortunate, since that's where all the
> cool tools are being developed these days.
> 
> > Rather than doing the whole lex/yacc bit, I'd suggest finding some
> > ready-made SGML-parsing tools.  For instance, if you are handy with
> > Perl I think there are some SGML modules in CPAN ... certainly there
> > are HTML parsers, which'd probably be easy to adapt to the purpose.
> 
> I agree with Tom that you try to find existing parsers tuned towards
> this stuff, with the addition that you do your self a favor (if you
> have the option to change the format), and change it to be something
> that can be parsed as XML.
> 
> You don't mention what this is for, but if you're able to move to XML,
> you can use Perl (which I personally prefer), Python, TCL, or even one
> of several C libraries (expat or rxp or GNOME's libxml) that are
> suprisingly easy to use, given that text hacking is not something that
> is traditionally easy to do in C.  The possibilities are much broader.
> 
> Mike.
> 
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