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>Can any one define what a parsing operation is, what a parser does? For
>example in the help menu of Symantec Cafe, it gives a really useful, but
>circlular definition of "Parse"...Choose Parse to parse the file.
>
>I have feeling that this is one word that has become so overused, that it
>has lost its meaning.
Only at Symantec...
Parsing is splitting something (a file, stream, array or whatever) in to
recognizable components.
An example of simple parsers are pieces of code that takes a string in the
form of an email address (somebody -at- someplace -dot- net) and break it into its
component parts (yielding "somebody" and "someplace.net") for processing by
other pieces of code.
Another one takes a string in the form of a file path
(/root/directory/directory/filename) and splits the filename from the
directory path (yielding "/root/directory/directory/" and "filename") for
processing.
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