Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] What about a universal XML parsing dissector

["John R." <jhoger@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 1/30/07, Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Jan 30, 2007, at 11:07 AM, John R. wrote:
>
> > Sequence, iteration, algorithms,
> > etc. are more naturally handled in code than XML document (that didn't
> > stop the abomination that is XSLT though ;-)  ).
>
> Nor did it stop NetPDL:

Another approach to the same problem, here's a paper that describes a
language without all the <> noise:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dbrumley/pubs/gapa-ndss-07.pdf

The packet formats are described in BNF to the degree possible, which
is probably more natural for most computer science types.

It has a built-in programming language which would be easier than
programming in an XML programming language.

It would be nice if there were some middle ground between building in
a toy language and describing packets mostly in code and hand-built
tables. What one wants I think is the equivalent of Lex and Yacc but
less slanted towards parsing programming languages. You would describe
90% of the protocol in BNF, and then write the remaining glue logic in
C or some other language.

-- John.