Robert Ramey wrote:
Stefan Seefeld wrote:
I think you (still) totally miss the point. Sorry.
LOL - I guess so. The first message in the thread asks the question:
I would like to know, if any library for parsing XML file is available in boost or not. I srearched in the boost.org site for the same but, I cound't get any library as such.
which is the question I've addressed. I.m not sure what else we're referring to here.
Well, we debated how to fill that gap, i.e. in particular, what exactly needs to be added to boost. I pointed out that I had already submitted an API (implemented in terms of libxml2), while you suggested that using spirit with some formal XML grammar might be a good starting point.
That is also the appeal of "Let's reinvent it !". There are XML parsers out there that support all the above. Why not use them ?
Perhaps that's a good question to the original poster.
I don't think so, as the quest for a boost.xml API is still valid IMO. There is no standardized way to handle with XML input in C++. The point I'm trying to make here is that proposing a C++ API for and suggesting to (re-)implement XML handling are two quite different things.
What features of XML are you using ? External subsets or any other URLs that need to be looked up ? XInclude support to make documents modular ? Etc., etc.
How are these questions related to parsing XML syntax?
Think of C++. What does it take to 'parse C++ syntax' ? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Quite a bit of semantic analysis, to disambiguate the syntax. Now, XML grammar is (fortunately) much simpler, however I have never come across the need to only 'parse XML syntax' without doing that extra work required to do the rest. What do you expect an XML parser to return ? The XML spec has quite a clear definition of that (http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml-infoset-20040204/#intro) That's what Boris was referring to as a 'conforming XML parser'. Anything non-conformant shouldn't be called an 'XML parser'. There already is way too much non-conformance in the wild. Regards, Stefan -- ...ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin...