Re: regexless parsing, again?

On Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 06:55:23PM -0400, Marcus J. Ranum wrote:

> - Yes, it will use a pseudo-XML like intermediate form. close enough
>         to XML to annoy those of us who hate XML but incompatible
>         enough with XML to annoy the XML nazis.
> - It will be embeddable as a re-entrant library and should plug into
>         pretty much anything.
> - It will not be syslog-specific.

Is the intent to eliminate the need for manual configuration, or just
to exchange manual regex configuration for a manual lex+yacc-style
setup?

If the former, more power to you.

If the latter, you may be trading in one kind of tyranny for another
kind of tyranny.  A lex+yacc setup will still require lots of
intervention and expertise.  You might get better performance, but you
may also run into the limits of LALR(1); logs can need a lot of
lookahead.  If you put in more lookahead, you'll start running into
the same performance problems as regexes.

Anyway, looking forward to whatever you come up with!

- Morty