Re:You can't parse XML with regex. Let's do it anyways
by quotemstr on Saturday October 04, 2025 @11:08PM
(#45478578)
Of course. But the mathematical, computer-science level truth is that you can make a regular pattern that recognizes a string in any context-free language so long as you're willing to place a bound on the length (or equivalently, the nesting depth) of that string. Everything else is a lie-to-children (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children).
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Re:You can't parse XML with regex. Let's do it anyways
by rcxdude on Sunday October 05, 2025 @06:18AM
(#45480431)
You can, but you probably shouldn't since said regex is likely to be very hard to work with due to the amount of redundant states involved.
Re:You can't parse XML with regex. Let's do it anyways
by quotemstr on Sunday October 05, 2025 @11:08AM
(#45482058)
Our discourse does a terrible job of distinguishing impossible things from things merely ill-advised, and I think intellectual honestly requires us to be up front about the difference.
Yeah, I'd almost certainly reject a code review using, say, Python's re module to extract stuff from XML, but while doing so, I would give every reason except "you can't do that".