World: r3wp

I'm trying to parse data using that but seem to get it parsing some 
spaces also

parse/all perhaps

I'll try it

no that parses every letter

I'm beginning to wonder if it is a bug in parse

Anyone know how to parse a string such that the newlines and tabs 
are parsed?  I'm not getting the results I'm expecting.

Hoping to see someone elses command in case I'm just brain farting 
something.

>> a: join "line1" [newline "line2"]
== "line1^/line2"
>> parse a [any [newline (print "newline found") | skip]]
newline found
== true

yeah, never had problems when parsing tabs and newlines

When parsing strings without the /all refinement, words are separated 
by space. Example that work:

>> parse "word1 word2^-word3^/word4" ["word1" "word2" "word3" newline 
"word4"]
== true
You can also explicit specify the tab:

>> parse "word1 word2^-word3^/word4" ["word1" "word2" #(tab) "word3" 
newline "word4"]
== true

Actually the #(tab) seems to be ignored, because you can specify 
it anywhere:

>> parse "word1 word2^-word3^/word4" ["word1" "wo" #(tab) "rd2" "word3" 
newline "word4"]
== true

But you get false, if specifying the space (which may be a strange 
thing):

>> parse "word1 word2^-word3^/word4" ["word1" #" " "word2" "word3" 
newline "word4"]
== false
Also you need to specify newlines, they are not seen as space:

>> parse "word1 word2^-word3^/word4" ["word1" "word2" "word3" "word4"]
== false

If you need to parse for tabs at certain places, use: parse/all
I hope, it helps!

>> b: [#(tab)]
== [# (tab)]
>> length? b
== 2
>> first b
== #
>> type? first b
== issue!
>> second b
== (tab)
>> type? second b
== paren!

so your "tab" is ignored because it's not a tab at all. it's the 
same as doing "" (tab) in the rule, ie empty string (always matches) 
followed by code that basically does nothing.

Aha! :-)

How did I get #(tab) in my head!?

So to explicit specitying the tab, it must be:

>> parse "word1 word2^-word3^/word4" ["word1" "word2" "^(tab)" "word3" 
newline "word4"]
== false

So that doesn't parse, meaning tabs are seen as spaces.

Sorry about any confusion! :-)

And I guess, tab can be specified in the rule-block more simple as 
in::
["word1" "word2" tab "word3" newline "word4"]

you need parse/all to be able to parse spaces and tabs.

Thanks everyone for your posts on this

Paul, it could be good to know, if you got it to work!?

G: #"^(tab)"

Probably.

Hi all,

Are there any good references to learn PARSE?

There is a parse page on the Wikibook.

Found it -- Thanks

Also this about parsing: http://www.rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore-15.html

parse/all  and used "^-" for tab

Ok ran into an issue.  Is there an easy way to parse a string that 
has doublequotes in it together.  Such as {some chars "" some more 
chars"" and more}

I need the quotes to be single just one set and not two together 
and the parse to keep intact the string section because often it 
is a part of an html tag.

Paul, do a search & replace upfront. Much simpler than to create 
complex parse rules.

I often use this pattern. Do some basic action on the parse input, 
parse the first round, again do some other processing than using 
parse again. Much simpler and faster to get where you want to go.

paul what rule are you using for your parse

Thanks Robert, I'll look into that further as I did place with replace 
but because they were quotes it seemed that parse/all still wanted 
to break apart at a quote even though I told it only tabs.

Tom, for parse I only want to parse/all data tab.  Problem is that 
parse will break apart html tags and more.  I don't want to parse 
out tags because they will be needed to be left intact to some extent.

It just seems to me that parse/all data tab doesn't ONLY parse out 
the tabs but breaks at these doublequotes together.

Paul how are you defining tab?  it seems to work for me.

str
== {some chars "" some more chars"" and more}
>> parse/all str "^-"
== [{some chars "" some more chars"" and more}]

there are no beraks at the double quotes.

It looks like it breaks on html tags that might be broken.  For example, 
I was testing parse on a tab deliminated file and performing the 
following parse:

parse data "^-"

The problem is that some of these broken html tags cause parse to 
not work correctly.  The tags will contain double quotes (The result 
of an export from oscommerce).

sorry i was using parse/all data "^-"

Doesn't even have to be broken tags it appears

Just when a quote is preceeding the tag

data: {my string^-"<span style="font: 12px arial;>some text</span>"}

>> parse/all data "^-"

== ["my string" "<span style=" {font: 12px arial;>some text</span>"}]

Notice you get it breaking the string even where there is NOT a tab.

Is this a bug?

I've looked at this some more and it only seems to be a problem if 
the quote is preceeding the <span> tag.  If you move the quote around 
you get what is expected and get the correct expected parsing.

Your example still doesn't seem to jive with the documentation.  
Reading the docs, I would expected two strings in the output block. 
 "my string" and the rest, in braces.  It has something to do with 
a double quote starting a parse sequence.   {"abc"def} parses as 
["abc" "def"]  { "abc"def"} parses as a single string as expected 
[{ "abc"def}]