9.8.3. Conceptual Overview of Parsing

The following figures are to help you understand the concept of parsing.

The figures include the following terms:

string start: is the beginning of the source string (or substring).
string end: is the end of the source string (or substring).
length: is the length of the source string.
match start: is in the source string and is the first character of the match.
match end: is in the source string. For a string pattern, it is the first character after the end of the match. For a positional pattern, it is the same as match start.
match position: is in the source string. For a string pattern, it is the first matching character. For a positional pattern, it is the position of the matching character.
token: is a distinct syntactic element in a template, such as a variable, a period, a pattern, or a comma.
value: is the numeric value of a positional pattern. This can be either a constant or the resolved value of a variable.

Figure 9.1. Conceptual Overview of Parsing

Figure 9.2. Conceptual View of Finding Next Pattern

Figure 9.3. Conceptual View of Word Parsing

Note

The figures do not include error cases.