Thread: Integration with Web?

Originally Posted by Zach_the_Lizard

I don't think it'd be so horrible if he's looking for, say, a specific tag, such as <ul>. It's certainly doable, considering Webkit and Gecko are written in C++, and they have to do far more than simply read in what amounts to XML.

Code:

<script>
var foo = "HTML is so easy to parse <ul>";
</script>

<!-- In fact <ul> it's ridiculously simple. -->

<pre>
It's not like <ul> the syntax is particularly complex.
</pre>

(Oh, and I encoded the whole thing in Shift-JIS)

I wasn't really trying to say that C++ is inherently a bad language for the job, but I wouldn't recommend trying to code up the nitty gritty details by yourself. HTML is large, only partially standardized, and incredibly complex. Even if you do manage to create a working parser, it's not really fun. You'll probably feel like you just finished extracting a rotting corpse from a sewer pipe -- a challenging task, but one you'd rather avoid.

Scripting languages, on the other hand, usually have standardized libraries or packages for doing this, and they are fully functional. It's not that such libraries don't exist for C++, but they aren't ubiquitous, and you could spend days just deciding which library to use in the first place.

Originally Posted by brewbuck

...

So what you're saying is...

step 1) find Sebastiani
step 2) steal his brain
step 3) ???
step 4) profit

It all makes sense now

>> HTML is large, only partially standardized, and incredibly complex. Even if you do manage to create a working parser, it's not really fun. You'll probably feel like you just finished extracting a rotting corpse from a sewer pipe -- a challenging task, but one you'd rather avoid.

Hell of an analogy, LOL.

>> Scripting languages, on the other hand, usually have standardized libraries or packages for doing this, and they are fully functional. It's not that such libraries don't exist for C++, but they aren't ubiquitous, and you could spend days just deciding which library to use in the first place.

I wouldn't necessarily rule it out on those grounds. C++ doesn't standardize a lot of things, for the sake of preserving generality, among other things, but there are nonetheless plenty of free, robust frameworks available (maybe more so than any other language, even) to make up for it.

That said, there's nothing wrong with using an interpreted language, either. It can be a lot easier to get things rolling, for sure. That, and the interface is generally more uniform with respect to all of the other libraries that come with the language, which is nice.

EDIT: I realize now that my refutation doesn't actually refute what you said, Brewbuck. In fact, it almost doesn't make sense in response to what you said. So I'll just leave it as a reiteration rather than a refutation. Sorry, it's late.