XML Newbie Woes

[Mark Wieder]

Graham-

Tuesday, September 24, 2013, 8:58:34 AM, you wrote:

> I'm interested in your ability to parse xml files in order to
> determine the structure - my guess is that you must have a foolproof
> method of dealing with dead ends. In my small experiments I was
> surprised to see that some of the things I tried to do met with no
> result, not even an error message.

LOL. I'd never claim to have a foolproof anything.
The xml specification was designed to give developers a lot of
flexibility in how the data is structured, and a key to understanding
the structure is a schema or dtd file. That's what tells you what xml
tags are permissible and expected. Here's the schema for gpx data:

http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/gpx.xsd

Don't worry, it isn't designed to be understandable by humans, and
it's a good example of the sort of recursive data structure I was
talking about. But basically everything you need to know about the gpx
data format is right there.

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net