10.1184/R1/6470549.v1 Christopher Scaffidi Christopher Scaffidi Brad Myers Brad Myers Mary Shaw Mary Shaw The Topes Format Editor and Parser Carnegie Mellon University 2007 end user programming end user software engineering data validation data manipulation data formats 2007-01-01 00:00:00 Journal contribution https://kilthub.cmu.edu/articles/journal_contribution/The_Topes_Format_Editor_and_Parser/6470549 It is currently difficult and time-consuming to validate and manipulate data in web applications, so we have developed an editor and a parser to simplify these tasks. Our editor enables end-user programmers to create and debug reusable, flexible data formats without learning a complex new language. Our parser uses these formats to turn strings into structured objects and to report its level of confidence that each string is a valid instance of the format. End-user programmers can use our system to create validation code that takes a graduated response to slightly invalid data. We evaluate our system’s expressiveness by defining formats for commonly-occurring web data.