The parsing instructions are ARG, PARSE, and PULL (see
section ARG, section PARSE, and section PULL).
The data to parse is a
source string. Parsing
splits up the data in a source string and assigns pieces of it into
the variables named in a template. A
template is
a model specifying how to split
the source string. The simplest kind of template consists of only
a list of variable names. Here is an example:
variable1 variable2 variable3
This kind of template parses the source string into blank-delimited
words. More complicated templates contain patterns in addition to
variable names.
- String patterns
- Match characters in the source string to specify where to split
it. (See section Templates Containing String Patterns for details.)
- Positional patterns
- Indicate the character positions at which to split the source
string. (See section Templates Containing Positional (Numeric) Patterns for details.)
Parsing is essentially a two-step process.
- Parse the source string into appropriate substrings using patterns.
- Parse each substring into words.