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(dot)hackers(at)debian(dot)org]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 1999 4:46 PM
> To: pgsql-hackers(at)postgreSQL(dot)org
> Subject: Re: [HACKERS] [OT] flex, yacc, and bison
>
> Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
> > "Jackson, DeJuan" <djackson(at)cpsgroup(dot)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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