Re: XML for VMS

JF Mezei wrote:
Really basic question here:

Does the amount of work to install/compile and then learn and build all the structures and routines to use those "read made" XML parsers exceed the amount of time it takes to simply write code to parse the one XML format that you have to parse and take the values directly into your application's structures ?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: Using existing and debugged libraries -- such as libxml2 -- is usually more efficient. Rolling your own custom source code when appropriate and appropriately-licensed source code is available, documented, maintained, and fully functional? That's not the approach I'd typically recommend.

The existing XML libraries provide flexibility beyond the basic parsing, including syntax verification, ease of extensibility and any number of useful capabilities.

The corollary here is the just-one-more-fix trap that folks fall into with the comma-separated list morass. CSV files can become surprisingly evil and twisty constructs, in the general case.

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