What does "parsing" mean?

Question

In terms of HTML, like "A browser parses HTTP-Response". I looked at wikipedia, which defines it as, "the process of analyzing a sequence of tokens to determine its grammatical structure with respect to a given formal grammar"

Does anyone have a layman definition?

I've read everyone's responses and now I have a much better understanding. I would give everyone a thumbs up but I'm only level 1 so I don't seem to be able to access that feature. I'll let the public vote because many of the answers were fantastic!

Answer 1

hello,

i hope this helps.

Basically parsing is a technical term which is the act of annalyzing a set of characters or "data" and then determining if that data is important or not. For example take the following xml :
stay cool

Parsing this data means being able to get the name of the xml element "COMMAND" and its value "stay cool".

Cut short, with respect to the given syntax or language (XML in this case), parsing is the action by which one can properly recognize/decipher/acquire the significant data (and commands) from a sequence, and then act on the particular data.

I hope this helps :)

Answer 2

Basically there are two steps when a browser parses straight HTML: 1) Separate text and tags. 2) Figure out which tags are properly written.

Most languages (PHP, Java, C++, Visual Basic, Unix script, etc.) have a third step, which is to report errors on improper commands/statements. HTML is unusual in that it doesn't report errors.

In general terms, parsing is figuring out if a statement is valid and reporting if it's not. In HTML, a tag is analogous to a statement.

Answer 3

I'll try...it means going through data or information and looking for something meaningful. A browser can parse and look for a code, a person can "parse" and look for a meaningful word or phrase. I hope that helps.

Answer 4

Parsing means to...well...I it's one of those things that's kind of hard to explain, I'll give a few examples.

When you go to a website, the html code, which means nothing to most people, and is not how the site is supposed to look, is parsed by the browser into what you see. Code for links is turned into links, img tags are turned into images is turned to bold,
to breaks, et cetera.

Another time when parsing is used is with xml files. The tags within an xml file mean nothing without a set of rules. With code that parses an xml file, it defines those rules, and could specify that is supposed to be parsed into , which is then parsed by the browser into a webpage you can read. Everything gets parsed eventually. =)

Example number 3 is with server side scripting like php. When the browser sends an http request, and the server finds the php file, it looks through, and reads the part between the , it follows the "rules" that are defined in the file, and the rules in the core of php itself to determine what to do with that, then it sends it to the browser, with all of the php having been processed by the server, and then the browser parses that html.


I guess you could define it as "Turning garbled text into something readable, and displaying it the way it was meant to be, as defined by a set of rules"

gl =)

Answer 5

RE:
What does "parsing" mean?
In terms of HTML, like "A browser parses HTTP-Response". I looked at wikipedia, which defines it as, "the process of analyzing a sequence of tokens to determine its grammatical structure with respect to a given formal grammar"

Does anyone have a layman definition?

Answer 6

Wikipedia pretty much nailed it.

A "token" is whatever the smallest unit of measure in a language is. In English it would be words and punctuation. So to parse a sentence in English we break it up into words and punctuation and analyze them in order and compare them to English grammar and an English dictionary to determine what the sentence means.

In HTML tokens are the tags and the non-tagged-text that make up an HTML document. These must obey a formal grammar (the HTML specification). A browser parses the tokens that make up the HTML document to determine how to display the text.

Answer 7

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To me, worship is putting something or someone first in your life. That is the reason people can worship their job, their money, their family, their "belly", etc. And that is reason people can give worship to those other than Jehovah. But when Jehovah is first is your life, it is to him that you pray, that you sing about, that you speak about, that you read about, that you live for, that you long for, that you look forward to listening to and about, that you seek the approval of, that you study about, that you teach about, that you reach out to. He is your other half in a spiritual relationship. And spirituality cannot be complete without that other half. The definition of worship is multi-faceted, as are the expressions of worship. We speak of "worshiping in many ways". And that is correct. I don't mean all forms of worship are acceptable. But that our worship takes on different facets or expressions. We can't sing and study at the same time. But both are worship. We can't study and pray at the same time. But both are worship. There is more, but I will stop here.

Answer 8

Exactly parses means analysing some thing.i.e.,Way of analysing the programs in the corrected way.

Answer 9

Your definition is the grammatical definition. "Parse" also means to list the grammatical structure of a word. For example, you would parse the Greek word "potamos" (river) as: "Noun-Singular-Masculine-Second Declension-Nominative."

Answer 10

A process by which programming data is broken into smaller, more distinct chunks of information that can be more easily interpreted and acted on.