[KinoSearch] FieldSpec/InvIndexSpec API

[Peter Karman]

Marvin Humphrey scribbled on 11/19/06 3:11 PM:
> 
> On Nov 16, 2006, at 7:37 PM, Peter Karman wrote:
> 
>> But something like XML::Simple should be able to handle most anything 
>> we dream up for this purpose.
>>
>> I prefer libxml2 for its speed and ubiquity on unixy systems (and 
>> because Swish uses it ;)). There's a nice tutorial for it here: 
>> http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/GnomeLibXml2.html
>>
>> I also like libxml2 because it converts all input to UTF-8 for you (if 
>> it isn't already). One less thing to worry about.
> 
> I just checked out libxml2, and I'm concerned about its sheer size.  I 
> think it's too heavyweight for this limited task.  Unlike Swish, we 
> wouldn't be using it for serious parsing of user input.
> 
> For now, all we need is a way to convey small amounts of data in a tree 
> structure.  I think if we limit ourselves to a strict subset of XML, 
> writing our own C parser will be simple enough.  Here's a starting set 
> of constraints:
> 
>   * No attributes.
>   * ASCII-only.
>   * No escapes.
> 
> Basically, nothing except for paired tags indicating node name, with a 
> text value and optional child nodes.
> 

yes, given the XML you've been describing, it makes sense to go with a very 
lightweight parser.

Glad to see you're going the XML route for now; writing the parser aside, I 
think it'll make life easier having a human-readable meta format.

-- 
Peter Karman  .  http://peknet.com/  .  peter at peknet.com