What is parsing in terms that a new programmer would understand? [closed]

Answer 1

I'd explain parsing as the process of turning some kind of data into another kind of data.

In practice, for me this is almost always turning a string, or binary data, into a data structure inside my Program.

For example, turning

":Nick!User@Host PRIVMSG #channel :Hello!"

into (C)

struct irc_line {
    char *nick;
    char *user;
    char *host;
    char *command;
    char **arguments;
    char *message;
} sample = { "Nick", "User", "Host", "PRIVMSG", { "#channel" }, "Hello!" }