Subject: Re: Lisp XML parser ? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 2000/06/23 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3170744203873830@naggum.no> * Simon Brooke <simon@jasmine.org.uk> | Is not an entity more or less equivalent to a read macro? No. Neither more nor less. The Lisp reader returns whole Lisp objects from its reader macro functions, which is eminently doable because Lisp has syntax with a defined meaning. Entities are sources of characters that sort of "precede" lexical analysis, but there are rules for where the end of an entity may occur, so the Entity end "signal" is a special input event. Case in point: When you give the string "foo‐bar" to the parser, and suppose you have defined dash to mean the string "--", the parser will actually see "foo‐--|bar", where | has the role of the Entity end. Both the start and end of an entity are at the same level as all other syntax in SGML, but the parsed result may or may not need to know this depending on whether you intend to reconstruct the entity structure (as in edit them) or process the element structure. | There's nothing very magical about it... unless I'm | missing something very badly? I think I have made a case for for "magical", if not "very magical". #:Erik -- If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations.