From: Dennis Roberts <denrober@...>
Date: 2005-07-15T14:31:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Parsing DNS zonefiles

Ahh.  Makes sense.  Thanks for the clarification.

On 7/14/05, why the lucky stiff <ruby-talk@whytheluckystiff.net> wrote:
> Dennis Roberts wrote:
> 
> >Dan could you explain the difference between using regular expressions
> >and a bonafide parser?
> >
> >
> He's just distinguishing between a parser which obeys an overall grammar
> and a parser made of regexps (little grammars).
> 
> Ruby's parser, for instance, leverages a parser generator (yacc) which
> is given the rules used to parse Ruby source code.
> 
> However, Regexps are often used in conjunction with Racc, a parser
> generator for Ruby.  So Regexps aren't always a bad thing, and in fact
> they can be used to add great flexibility (such as in feedparser.org),
> they just tend to leave lots of holes in the overall soundness of the
> parser.
> 
> _why
> 
>