What language should I use to write a text parser and display the results in a user friendly manner? [closed]

Answer 1

You should use the language that YOU know... Unless you have so much time available to complete the project that you can also spend the time learning a new language.

Answer 2

I would suggest using Python or Perl. Parsing large text files with regular expressions is really fast.

Answer 3

Parse this massive amount of text in the shortest time possible.

Consider the PADS Project from AT&T. It's a special-purpose language, compatible with C, that's designed exactly for high-speed parsing of log files and other ad hoc data formats. There's even a feature where it can try to learn your log format from examples, although I don't know if that has hit production yet. The people behind the project are really smart, and it's had a big impact within the phone company. PADS gives very high performance on data streams that produce gigabytes. Joe Bob says check it out.

If "massive text in the shortest time possible", Perl and Python are not the answer. But if you need to whip up something not too slow, and it's OK to take longer, Perl and Python could be OK. Tems of megabytes is not actually that big.

Answer 4

I've used both Python and Perl. Perl is a more natural fit for this but can be hard to maintain. Python will do it just as well and is easier to read. Go for Python.

Answer 5

I'd suggest Perl. It was practically built for parsing log files. As for output I agree with ghostdog74, HTML is the way to go. Perl has dozens of modules that allow you to build and/or template HTML.

I'd parse out the data using regular expressions, then use Template::Toolkit (on CPAN) to create nice pages using HTML and CSS templates.

Answer 6

I believe perl is considered a good choice to parse text.