in reply to RE: (2) Cross-platform config file parsing (XML::Simple looks good, but...)
in thread Cross-platform config file parsing

If an 8-year-old can learn HTML, with dozens of different tags and formatting things, surely an adult can learn an XML schema with as many tags as you have configuration options.. *shrug*. I would present them with a sample and see how easily they learn it. Your XML parser should inform them of errors in the XML file as well as early in the process as you can (perhaps a separate process from your application that checks the syntax of the file, which they can run after each change they make).

In addition, there are lots of simple XML editors on the market now too, complete with nice GUI front-ends, and IE 5 does a pretty good job of displaying it.

I personally don't think learning XML is going to be your biggest hurdle, but obviously you know the users better than I do, so it's your call... Good luck though.

  • Comment on RE: RE: (2) Cross-platform config file parsing (XML::Simple looks good, but...)

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RE: (4) Cross-platform config file parsing (hmmm... other hurdles?)
by ybiC (Prior) on Oct 31, 2000 at 21:38 UTC
    Fastolfe - You may very well be right about XML::Simple being a good option for this sit.   Looks otherwise to me, but keeping an open mind, particularly since this is new (Perl) territory for me.   Well, that and the fact that you (and many, many Monks) are better coders than I'll ever be.   {g}

    If there are other hurdles you see, I'd welcome hearing, er, reading them.   No such thing as too well informed.
        cheers,
        Don
        striving for Perl Adept

[reply]
      If nothing else, just write something simple: 
      my %ini;
my $group = "global";

while (<DATA>) {
   chomp;
   next if /^\s*;/ || !/\S/;   # skip comments/blank lines
   $group = lc($1), next if /^\s*\[([^\]]+)\]/;
   if (/^\s*(\w+)=/) {
      $ini{$group}->{lc($1)} = $';
   } else {
      warn "Parse error on line $.: $_\n";
   }
}

print $ini{global}->{this}, "\n";
print $ini{section}->{this}, "\n";

__DATA__

; sample data, this could be from
; a real .ini file for example..
; I hope I got the comment delimiter
; right.. maybe it's ' instead..

Some=sample data
this=this is an .ini file

[Section]
THIS=this will be in 'section' (note lower case) instead of 'global'

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