On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, John Chambers wrote:
> This is in line with current practice, and isn't really much of a
> programming problem. It makes recognizing the start of a tune a bit
> more involved. The code has to accept either X: or T: as starting an
> ABC tune, and default the index to 1 if no X: line was seen. This is
> a bit more complex than just matching "X:", but it's not what you'd
> call an onerous burden on any programmer.
Granted, I haven't written our parser yet, but this makes no sense to me.
If the tune delineator is one or more blank lines in a tune, it would be
NUTS to assume that a tune starts with either an X: or a T: is the start
of a tune. What's to assume that tune writers are going to follow this
'rule' more than any other.
Maybe I'm nuts, but I was invisioning my parser looking for the first
alpha character in the file as the first tune, and then for the first
alpha character after groups of more than one EOL marker. Seem's
completely straightforward and easy, and in no way dependant or easier or
harder than if an X: line is included. (I've not mentioned the one
exception I can think of, which is the % token.
Maybe I've misread the standard. What I can't figure out is
a) is this true and I don't understand it?
b) am I right and you don't understand it?
c) am I right and for some reason people are motivated to deliberately
mislead and confound the issue.
I'm perfectly willing to admit that it might be a) .. in fact I'd rather
it be a) because it means that someone will probably explain why I'm
mistaken, and I'll write a better parser w/o having to rewrite out
mistakes. I certainly don't place emphasis on c)
--
+ Christian Marcus Cepel ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._ +
| [EMAIL PROTECTED] `6_ 6 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`) |
| 5812 Square Circle, Columbia 65203 (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-' |
| Work: 882.8309 Home: 573.443.8676 _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,' |
| ICQ: 12384980 Cell/Page 268.7533 (il),-'' (li),' ((!.-' |
| Computer Support Specialist, Sr. School of Info Sci & Learn Tech UM-C |
| WebM: www.coe.missouri.edu/~vrcbd/ *And the wrens have returned & are |
| nesting *In the hollow of that oak where his heart once had been *And |
+ he lifts his arms in a blessing *For being born again. --Rich Mullins +
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
