RE: Help with sorting another file


Subject: RE: Help with sorting another file
From: Arthur Corliss (acorliss@nevaeh-linux.org)
Date: Thu Feb 26 2004 - 17:59:21 AKST


On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Troy Melhase wrote:

> I was following you and agreeing with you until you wrote that.
>
> The original poster, Jon, never said what he was building. He asked for
> help parsing his XML data, but stated nothing in the way of requirements or
> overall system. For all we know, he's building something to replace
> tvguide.com. Given that, I was only trying to point out the potential
> problems of using tools that have no semantic knowledge of XML.

I think you need to reread the thread. Jon explicitly stated that he was
trying to feed his channel guide to a program (tv_sort) that couldn't figure
out some stop times for some programs. All he wanted is a way to remove the
entries that lacked them. At no point did he say he was developing something
himself, but he was plenty explicit as to what he wanted it to do. Regardless
of his intent, when the design goals are that precisely defined (and with
these particular specifications) I have no qualms about recommending a tool
that can do precisely that. Sed's semantical knowledge of XML is irrelevant
in this case.

I stand by my statement.

> Easy and fast are almost always at tension with robust and flexible. That's
> the only point I am compelled to make.

You only saved more disagreement by using the modifier "almost always". ;-)
There are many instances in which people make things much harder than it
has to be. If the problem is clearly defined enough (and in this case I
believe it was) there's no reason not to take advantage of even "unapproved"
tools when it can save that much time. Work smarter, not harder. BTW,
properly crafted I believe regular expressions are both "robust" and
"flexible" enough to perform this task.

        --Arthur Corliss
          Bolverk's Lair -- http://arthur.corlissfamily.org/
          Digital Mages -- http://www.digitalmages.com/
          "Live Free or Die, the Only Way to Live" -- NH State Motto
---------
To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2a23 : Thu Feb 26 2004 - 17:59:52 AKST