On Tue, 21 Sep 2021 13:12:10 -0500, Michael F. Stemper wrote: > On the prolog thread, somebody posted a link to: > <https://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html> > > One thing that it tangentially says is "XML is not the answer." > > I read this page right when I was about to write an XML parser to get > data into the code for a research project I'm working on. > It seems to me that XML is the right approach for this sort of thing, > especially since the data is hierarchical in nature. > > Does the advice on that page mean that I should find some other way to > get data into my programs, or does it refer to some kind of misuse/abuse > of XML for something that it wasn't designed for? > > If XML is not the way to package data, what is the recommended approach?
1'st can I say don't write your own XML parser, there are already a number of existing parsers that should do everything you will need. This is a wheel that does not need re-inventing. 2nd if you are not generating the data then you have to use whatever data format you are supplied as far as I can see the main issue with XML is bloat, it tries to do too many things & is a very verbose format, often the quantity of mark-up can easily exceed the data contained within it. other formats such a JSON & csv have far less overhead, although again not always suitable. As in all such cases it is a matter of choosing the most apropriate tool for the job in hand. -- Antonym, n.: The opposite of the word you're trying to think of. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list