> "take the lexer from file format XYZ, and I'm going to change the data model it produces" Apparently we've imagined slightly different things (and with the s

> "take the lexer from file format XYZ, and I'm going to change the data model it produces" Apparently we've imagined slightly different things (and with the sibling comment too; perhaps I should have provided examples at once). What I had in mind is rather standard formats and markup languages, which are already used in practice (though not always): such as XML (SVG, OO XML, XHTML being based on it) and JSON; BER and others for standard encoding rules; RDF for a generic data model with various serialization options. That is, not taking a lexer from another format's implementation, but using a standard one. Likewise with integrity checks: many formats already rely on integrity being guaranteed by file systems and network protocols, and don't include checksums; a similar story with compression, and with encryption (both of which some formats would still redefine and include, but often they can be applied separately as well, or at least using an existing standard/algorithm/library).