C# – Building Interpreter Of a Document Format

cdata structuresdocument

I'm going to start the development of my own document format(like PDF, XPS, DOC, RTF…), but I want to know where I can read some tutorials, how-to's…? I don't want code, this is a project that I want to learn how to build it, not use the experience of someone other.

PS: I want to make it like a XML file:

[Command Argument="Define it" Argument2="Something"]

It's like PDF, but this syntax will be interpreted by a program that I will build it using C#, just like HTML and your browser 😉

Remember that my question is about the program that will interpret this code, but it's good to start with a tutorial of interpreting XML code 😉

Best Answer

I assume you're doing this for the sake of learning how to do it. If that's the case, it is a worthwhile venture and I understand.

You'll want to start out by learning LL parsers and grammars. That will help you interpret the document that has been read from a file into a document object model (DOM). From there you can create routines to manipulate or render that document tree.

Good luck!

Related Solutions

C# – How to escape braces (curly brackets) in a format string in .NET

For you to output foo {1, 2, 3} you have to do something like:

string t = "1, 2, 3";
string v = String.Format(" foo {{{0}}}", t);

To output a { you use {{ and to output a } you use }}.

Or now, you can also use C# string interpolation like this (a feature available in C# 6.0)

Escaping brackets: String interpolation $(""). It is new feature in C# 6.0.

var inVal = "1, 2, 3";
var outVal = $" foo {{{inVal}}}";
// The output will be:  foo {1, 2, 3}

C# – Given a DateTime object, how to get an ISO 8601 date in string format

Note to readers: Several commenters have pointed out some problems in this answer (related particularly to the first suggestion). Refer to the comments section for more information.

DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH\\:mm\\:ss.fffffffzzz");

Using custom date-time formatting, this gives you a date similar to
2008-09-22T13:57:31.2311892-04:00.

Another way is:

DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("o");

which uses the standard "round-trip" style (ISO 8601) to give you
2008-09-22T14:01:54.9571247Z.

To get the specified format, you can use:

DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ")

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – How to escape braces (curly brackets) in a format string in .NET

C# – Given a DateTime object, how to get an ISO 8601 date in string format

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