> In general, "parsing" is analyzing the grammatical structure of a > string. People sometimes talk loosely about "parsing the command line". > but I don't think that's normally applied to providing the actual > arguments (corresponding to the definition's "formal parameters") when a > function is called - that's argument passing.
I find that people often use "parsing" in contexts where my (non-native) language feeling says it should not be used. For example, people talk about "parsing" trees, meaning that they perform some processing on the tree with the objective of extracting certain information. In the same sense, I have seen people "parsing" lists - meaning they iterate over the list. If I extrapolate my experience with German IT language, I think people often use terminology they have not fully understood. I often ask my students what the difference between "eingeben", "ausgeben", "übergeben" und "zurückgeben" is when they start saying that "die Funktion gibt das Ergebnis aus". Regards, Martin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
