Re:Parsing can become accidentally quadratic because of sscanf
by minitech on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @03:49PM
(#26320457)
In theory, sure. In practice, nobody does, and length prefixes stop a format like that from being conveniently writable with a plain text editor.
Re:Parsing can become accidentally quadratic because of sscanf
by CivBase on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @07:19PM
(#26323125)
I work on avionics and we definitely use fixed-length text all the time. Text is often much more convenient than blobs, even when adhering to strict schemas.
Syntaxes like XML, JSON, YAML, etc have become popular for their convenience and versatility, but they do not represent the whole of what is possible with text.
I can store fixed-length data using text. A strict schema can specify things like fixed lengths, value padding, orders for maps, exact whitespace rules, etc which can entirely remove the need for delimiters. A schema could even require length prefixes, just like you might use for a non-text format.
These concepts do not necessitate abandoning text. If you need the data to be readable/writable by a human with minimal tooling, you can still leverage text without sacrificing much parsing efficiency.