What does it mean to be a universal parser? In my mind, to be universal you should be able to parse anything, so you'd need something as versatile as any Turing language, so one could stick with the one we already have (Python). I'm vaguely aware of levels of grammar (regular, context-free?, etc.), and how things like XML can't/shouldn't be parsed with regex [1]. Most protocols probably aren't *completely* free to do whatever and probably fit into some level of the hierarchy, what level would this putative parser perform at?
Doing something like this from-scratch is a very tall order, are there candidate libraries that you'd want to see included in the stdlib? There is an argument for trying to "promote" a library that would security into the standard library over others that would just add features: trying to make the "one obvious way to do it" also the safe way. However, all things equal, more used libraries tend to be more secure. I think suggestions of this form need to pose a library that a) exists, b) is well used and regarded, c) stable (once in the the stdlib things are hard to change), and d) has maintainers that are amenable to inclusion. Nick [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/194586 On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 12:57 PM Nam Nguyen <bits...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello list, > > What do you think of a universal parsing library in the stdlib mainly for > use by other libraries in the stdlib? > > Through out the years we have had many issues with protocol parsing. Some > have even introduced security bugs. The main cause of these issues is the > use of simple regular expressions. > > Having a universal parsing library in the stdlib would help cut down these > issues. Such a library should be minimal yet encompassing, and whole parse > trees should be entirely expressible in code. I am thinking of combinatoric > parsing as the main candidate that fits this bill. > > What do you say? > > Thanks! > Nam > _______________________________________________ > Python-ideas mailing list > Python-ideas@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas > Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/ >
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