Re: [boost] [regex and string algo] again strange split behaviour

From: Pavol Droba (droba_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-07-14 08:14:47

Hi John,

On Thu, Jul 14, 2005 at 01:32:15PM +0100, John Maddock wrote:

[snip]
 
> At present I can't think of any real world use cases where a trailing empty 
> field would be important, so here's the challenge: can anyone think of a 
> file format, or transmission format or command line syntax or whatever where 
> the trailing field is actually required?  Real world cases only please, but 
> first two data points:
> 
> CSV files, and the Unicode character database don't require the output of 
> trailing blanks (and parsing of the latter would certainly break if they 
> were considered).
> 

I have one case where it is natural to have: CSV file with a tabular data in it.
When you parsing this structure, it is natural to have trailing blank, since
it represents a valid data point.

Another example is file path parsing. There is a fundamental difference between
/folder1/folder2/file
and
/folder1/folder2/folder3/

Yet after spliting (and not considering the last blank) this difference is lost.

Sure, it can almoust always be workarouded. But I assume, that it is much easier
to skip a blank token, than check always if it was supposed to be there.

Regards,
Pavol.