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The fact that those are your two options is just a testament to how absurdly unsuitable XML is for this purpose. Your "combinations of grep, sed, awk, perl" wi
by haberman 16y ago
The fact that those are your two options is just a testament to how absurdly unsuitable XML is for this purpose.
Your "combinations of grep, sed, awk, perl" will corrupt your data if your file happens to contain any CDATA, entities, unexpected formatting, processing instructions, etc.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes a quick hack is worth the risk. But it's certainly no reason to defend XML, which is what put you in the position where a quick hack was your best option.
- kamaal 16y agoI agree with you. Actually I'm not too much in favor of XML either. Somebody high up in the hierarchy attends a few conferences here and there, reads the IBM journal. All along the word 'XML' gets repeated some 1000 times. So the impression he gets is, XML is going to add value to everything it touches. Most developers like me have no say in that at all, we have to just use it. I prefer the hack to get it just done. But agree with you, none of that is a permanent solution.