What is parsing?

Question

Parsing is something I came accross alot in development, but as a junior its one of those things I assume I will get the hang of at some point, when its needed. In my current project I've been told to find and use an HTML parser for a certain function, I have found a couple on the web, but what does an HTML parser actually do? And what does it mean to parse an object??

Answer 1

A parser is a compiler / interpreter component that breaks data into smaller elements for easy translation into another language. A parser takes input in the form of a sequence of tokens or program instructions and usually builds a data structure in the form of a parse tree or an abstract syntax tree.

Answer 2

It is the process of identifying the tokens [tags, attributes] inside an HTML.