4 ms·

I just died a little inside. Knowing that there are people out there that would inflict this kind of nonsense as a standard for others to use makes one really l

by jpr 16y ago

I just died a little inside. Knowing that there are people out there that would inflict this kind of nonsense as a standard for others to use makes one really lose faith in humanity.

prodigal_erik 16y ago
That's the only way to distinguish an emphasized word from anemphasizedword
- scott_s 16y ago
 Which makes perfect sense for documents. So why do we use a markup language suitable for documents for general data? Whitespace matters in a document, but does not matter for data. (I'm not accusing you, I'm actually curious if you know the answer. I've never had to deal with XML.)
 - bsaunder 16y ago
 It may matter a lot for some data... When you send a binary file, would you like all of the zeros stripped? Your insignificant data from one perspective is possiblely significant from another perspective.
 - scott_s 16y ago
 I don't follow. If you need literal, unstructured data embedded in a structured format, then use whatever escape mechanism the format has.
 - jerf 16y ago
 It is not possible to ship binary over XML. Regardless of encoding used, XML rigidly forbids the bytes corresponding to non-whitespace ASCII chars below 32: http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#charsets http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#charsets This makes arbitrary binary impossible. You have to base64 encode it or something. Not entirely relevant to your point, but worth bringing up. (XML doesn't ever mangle binaries, because it simply forbids them.)
 - astine 16y ago
 Because for the longest time there was nothing both better and standardized. I've dealt with xml many times and hate it but It's better than maintaining your own proprietary DTL.
 - prodigal_erik 16y ago
 Anyone who adopted JSON could have been using s-expressions all along, but it's become a tradition to ignore everything Lisp got right until some brave soul gives it a makeover with curly braces.
 - astine 16y ago
 In theory, I'll agree with you. However, as far as I know, there are no s-exp parsing libraries for any language I know but Lisp. Also s-exps as they exist in Lisp assume some Lispish concepts that don't map to all languages. Symbols, for example, don't exist in Java. JSON is a better solution for cross language portability.
 - wendroid 16y ago
 (sorry I want to reply to the reply but there's no reply button for it) Saying there are no s-expression parsers for non-Lisp is ridiculous. This one's http://sexpr.sourceforge.net/ http://sexpr.sourceforge.net/ for C, it's been in sourceforge since 2002. perhaps you prefer one in : Javascript - http://planet.plt-scheme.org/package-source/dherman/javascript.plt/9/0/planet-docs/javascript/pjs.html http://planet.plt-scheme.org/package-source/dherman/javascri... Perl - http://search.cpan.org/~nelhage/Data-SExpression-0.34/lib/Data/SExpression.pm http://search.cpan.org/~nelhage/Data-SExpression-0.34/lib/Da... Limbo - http://man.cat-v.org/inferno/6/sexprs http://man.cat-v.org/inferno/6/sexprs I shan't go on
 astine 16y ago
 I didn't say that there weren't s-expression parsers for languages other than Lisp; just that I haven't found them. I'll be the first to admit that I haven't really been looking. But you'll note the disparity in support. A library for parsing XML with C may have existed since 2002, but it's existed for XML since 97. In Java, XML support has been baked into the JVM for a while, but S-exp parsers are hard to find. That library you list for Javascript is not a s-exp parser but rather a Scheme library for generating Javascript from a Scheme-like language. Googling for javascript and s-exps returns a lot of results like that but not many s-expression parsers. There certainly aren't any widely used and recognized libraries like there are for XML and JSON fro most languages aside from Lisp.
 - hcayless 16y ago
 It's an excellent question. My answer is, use XML for data if you need features that come with it, such as validation, or if you'll want to use it with tools/standards that orbit XML, like XQuery, or if you have a situation where you're dealing with both documents and data, and you want them to interoperate. Otherwise there's probably not a lot of benefit to XML; JSON, YAML, or a DSL will suit you just fine. A lot of XML-hate comes from its overuse—it comes with overhead that is too expensive for simple cases, but is pretty useful when you go beyond simple. Right tool for the right job and all that...

by jpr 16y ago

I just died a little inside. Knowing that there are people out there that would inflict this kind of nonsense as a standard for others to use makes one really lose faith in humanity.

prodigal_erik 16y ago

That's the only way to distinguish an emphasized word from anemphasizedword

scott_s 16y ago
Which makes perfect sense for documents. So why do we use a markup language suitable for documents for general data? Whitespace matters in a document, but does not matter for data. (I'm not accusing you, I'm actually curious if you know the answer. I've never had to deal with XML.)
- bsaunder 16y ago
  It may matter a lot for some data... When you send a binary file, would you like all of the zeros stripped? Your insignificant data from one perspective is possiblely significant from another perspective.
  - scott_s 16y ago
    I don't follow. If you need literal, unstructured data embedded in a structured format, then use whatever escape mechanism the format has.
  - jerf 16y ago
    It is not possible to ship binary over XML. Regardless of encoding used, XML rigidly forbids the bytes corresponding to non-whitespace ASCII chars below 32: http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#charsets http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#charsets This makes arbitrary binary impossible. You have to base64 encode it or something. Not entirely relevant to your point, but worth bringing up. (XML doesn't ever mangle binaries, because it simply forbids them.)
- astine 16y ago
  Because for the longest time there was nothing both better and standardized. I've dealt with xml many times and hate it but It's better than maintaining your own proprietary DTL.
  - prodigal_erik 16y ago
    Anyone who adopted JSON could have been using s-expressions all along, but it's become a tradition to ignore everything Lisp got right until some brave soul gives it a makeover with curly braces.
    - astine 16y ago
      In theory, I'll agree with you. However, as far as I know, there are no s-exp parsing libraries for any language I know but Lisp. Also s-exps as they exist in Lisp assume some Lispish concepts that don't map to all languages. Symbols, for example, don't exist in Java. JSON is a better solution for cross language portability.
    - wendroid 16y ago
      (sorry I want to reply to the reply but there's no reply button for it) Saying there are no s-expression parsers for non-Lisp is ridiculous. This one's http://sexpr.sourceforge.net/ http://sexpr.sourceforge.net/ for C, it's been in sourceforge since 2002. perhaps you prefer one in : Javascript - http://planet.plt-scheme.org/package-source/dherman/javascript.plt/9/0/planet-docs/javascript/pjs.html http://planet.plt-scheme.org/package-source/dherman/javascri... Perl - http://search.cpan.org/~nelhage/Data-SExpression-0.34/lib/Data/SExpression.pm http://search.cpan.org/~nelhage/Data-SExpression-0.34/lib/Da... Limbo - http://man.cat-v.org/inferno/6/sexprs http://man.cat-v.org/inferno/6/sexprs I shan't go on
      - astine 16y ago
        I didn't say that there weren't s-expression parsers for languages other than Lisp; just that I haven't found them. I'll be the first to admit that I haven't really been looking. But you'll note the disparity in support. A library for parsing XML with C may have existed since 2002, but it's existed for XML since 97. In Java, XML support has been baked into the JVM for a while, but S-exp parsers are hard to find. That library you list for Javascript is not a s-exp parser but rather a Scheme library for generating Javascript from a Scheme-like language. Googling for javascript and s-exps returns a lot of results like that but not many s-expression parsers. There certainly aren't any widely used and recognized libraries like there are for XML and JSON fro most languages aside from Lisp.
- hcayless 16y ago
  It's an excellent question. My answer is, use XML for data if you need features that come with it, such as validation, or if you'll want to use it with tools/standards that orbit XML, like XQuery, or if you have a situation where you're dealing with both documents and data, and you want them to interoperate. Otherwise there's probably not a lot of benefit to XML; JSON, YAML, or a DSL will suit you just fine. A lot of XML-hate comes from its overuse—it comes with overhead that is too expensive for simple cases, but is pretty useful when you go beyond simple. Right tool for the right job and all that...