Re: XML Alternatives
On Feb 12, 12:55 pm, Lars Uffmann <a...@nurfuerspam.de> wrote:
James Kanze wrote:
Once you have a more structured format, of course, you probably
want to use XML, if for no other reason than that it is
standard. But be aware that while human readable, it isn't
easily human readable, and that it requires a lot more resources
than some simpler formats.
What I liked about XML in the past is the automatic validation
by (ASP & PHP) opening with domxml - once there was no error
upon opening the file, I could assume that the XML validated
correctly :)
What's nice about XML is that much of the work has already been
done, yes. (Although I'd be surprised if you couldn't find a
library for the MS .ini format as well---or just about any
format used by an Open Source project somewhere.)
Don't know about ini-files, but they seem so simple that I'd
have to create the code to read out the parameters myself...
Otherwise those would be an option I guess.
They're a lot easier for a human to read and modify that XML is.
That's a big advantage. The code to parse them is also
significantly smaller than that necessary to parse XML---in some
cases, that can also be an advantage.
In practice, of course, you'll already have the tools handy
which will allow parsing them in just a couple of lines of code.
(My parser took about 10 lines of new code, IIRC.)
--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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