[ILUG] bind + lex + yacc...

[Paul Jakma]

right... the person kevin is poking fun at is me.

secondly: i mailed him about lex + yacc being very cute tools.

thirdly: to illustrate i gave lex + yacc examples (slightly extended
versions of examples from a HOWTO on the net) to parse, eg:

zone "foo" {
	master "bar.foo";
	slave bongle-dongle 45.67.8.9;
	slave floyd.foo;
	type whatever;
	file "/foo/bar";
	include "/foo/doo/hosts.txt";
	include /foo/doo/cnames.txt;
};

etc..

On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, John P. Looney wrote:

>  domain: "bing.com"
>  hosts:  www mail arse smeg twitter
>  ttl:    20000
> 
>  and then using lex & yacc, they could write a program that
> converts between that config file, and the tedious bind configs,
> and maybe even auto-generate a reverse DNS config file while they
> are at it.

the idea is to maintain one file, eg like the above, and have it 
generate all the configs - and any entries that may be gleaned from 
this config file. (eg SOA and NS).

>  Personally, I think they are demented. It's much more a job for
> something simple like Sed or Awk.

ah.. no. sed - you'll only substitute stuff, not powerful enough. awk 
doesnt have the data structures. i've looked.

then i sat down and started in perl, but the tedious parsing makes me 
cry. so i thought, there must be stuff that makes parsing less 
painful..

> People using lex & yacc just because they can make baby jesus cry.

well, i mailed kevin cause i was amazed how good these tools are.  
lex is a doddle. yacc can seem pretty difficult, but it isnt once you
get your head round it. i'm just amazed how easy they make it to
parse complex (but well structured) text.

> Kate

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
Trust everybody, but cut the cards.
		-- Finlay Peter Dunne, "Mr. Dooley's Philosophy"