I want to parse a config file sorta thing, like so:
[KEY:Value]
[SUBKEY:SubValue]
Now I started with a StreamReader, converting lines into character arrays, when I figured there's gotta be a better way. So I ask you, humble reader, to help me.
One restriction is that it has to work in a Linux/Mono environment (1.2.6 to be exact). I don't have the latest 2.0 release (of Mono), so try to restrict language features to C# 2.0 or C# 1.0.
@Gishu
Actually once I'd accommodated for escaped characters my regex ran slightly slower than my hand written top down recursive parser and that's without the nesting (linking sub-items to their parents) and error reporting the hand written parser had.
The regex was a slightly faster to write (though I do have a bit of experience with hand parsers) but that's without good error reporting. Once you add that it becomes slightly harder and longer to do.
I also find the hand written parser easier to understand the intention of. For instance, here is the a snippet of the code:
private static Node ParseNode(TextReader reader)
{
Node node = new Node();
int indentation = ParseWhitespace(reader);
Expect(reader, '[');
node.Key = ParseTerminatedString(reader, ':');
node.Value = ParseTerminatedString(reader, ']');
}
Regardless of the persisted format, using a Regex would be the fastest way of parsing. In ruby it'd probably be a few lines of code.
\[KEY:(.*)\]
\[SUBKEY:(.*)\]
These two would get you the Value and SubValue in the first group. Check out MSDN on how to match a regex against a string.
This is something everyone should have in their kitty. Pre-Regex days would seem like the Ice Age.