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The Topes Format Editor and Parser
journal contribution
posted on 2007-01-01, 00:00 authored by Christopher Scaffidi, Brad Myers, Mary ShawIt 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.