Need a little help from my AW friends

In what context are you referring to a 'generic parser?'


A parser does this: it takes something, and returns something.

My guess would be a that generic parser can take almost anything, and return it.

For instance: an xml parser would take an xml document and be able to return it in a format that a web browser could read (although most browsers have xml parsers already built in, but that's an example).

A data parser might be able to read a database file and return it as an xml file.

Basically, a "generic parser" could be considered something akin to data's version of a "universal translator."

A parser reads data. You input limits, it gives back what you want. Searching text for certain words and phrases (strings of characters) is an example. A web browser parses web pages. What you see is not what it sees, it interprets the data for you. For the techno-illiterate, all parsers are invisible magical daemons, harnessed by unknown wizards and controlled by simple mouse-oriented cantrips. The human brain is a monster of a generic parser.

There isn't any use, frankly.

There are two sorts of people who use "generic parsers"--linguists and geeks.

They are not mutually exclusive. The idea of parsing is, at it's heart linguistic. It is, in the most basic form the process of looking at a piece of text and labeling its parts.

John is tall=
Noun. 1st person singular nominative. o-stem
Substantive; 1st sing. archaic form non-linking
adj. singular neuter a-stem

You could actually, and people do, parse down to the smallest constituent elements of a language, even the etymology.

Parsing in this sense means looking at text and realizing what the parts are, and how they relate and connect to other parts; so you can parse things like xml or html or other "tagging" systems that label parts of a document, for instance.

Average ordinary people don't use parsers. They are used to lable and examine the relationships in data, data that is usually textual (but can be audio signals, for example) in order to do something to or with the data--

like translate it
or
put it into a database that uses the parsing to categorize the data (we do this with texts that are interesting, and "new" languages, to make dictionaries, for example)

Long story short, it's related to the MSN toolbar, and is nothing to worry about. This is how I found out:

kdnxdr said:

Thank you both for your answers.

I guess what I'm looking for is a little more simplistic than what you've given me, but I truelly appreciate how you've reduced the concept down for me.

I guess I'm looking for a concrete example of use by a total nontechie, totally blank-brain type person.

Here's the scenario:

Girlfriend/wife person gets on the home computer and a totally black screen comes up identified simply as a generic parser. It seems this generic parser thing has been used quite regularly.

Click to expand...

That doesn't make any sense that I can tell.

kdnxdr said:

First of all, how would such a person go about initiating the use of the generic parser? What would a person like this possibly be doing with a generic parser?

There are questionable other-type sites in the browser bar/history.

Click to expand...

OH, so you mean when you say "a totally black screen comes up identified simply as a generic parser" you mean that's a web page that says "generic parser?" That helps narrow it down. A little bit.

kdnxdr said:

Girlfriend/wife person wonders if there is some sort of connection between certain questionable sites and the use of the generic parser that a very computer illiterate person could manage. Such as foreign language sites (such as Russian), or sites that (from what the girlfriend/wife person understands (very little) are sites that go through a very intricate series of ips's for the purpose of being evasive when it comes to ownership, or so that maybe filters cannot be used as easily.

So, that's kinda the scenario, question.

It's interesting because, in my research, I've actually seen this question asked numerous times but no one has really been able to give those concrete examples.

Thank you, again, for all ya'lls help.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what a "generic parser" is as opposed to a plain old parser, but I'm thinking a "user" would never use one, or if used at all, it might not be called a parser.

A parser is something in computer science. One example is interpreting a command line like in the old MS-DOS system, or a "console" in Unix or Linux. Such a command line allows users to type commands to copy files, delete them, run programs, and in general control a computer, much like it's now more commonly done with windows and menus. A parser reads the command and its parameters and formats them into different strings so they are easily processed by an executive program which will look up what command is to be executed and the arguments passed to it.

Another example might be with Excel or other spreadsheet where you can import a text file. You can set up Excel so that a space is the "delimter" between cells, so that every set of characters separated by a space goes into a new cell.

A parser is an integral part of computer language interpreters and compilers. That's where the term is usually used, and that stuff gets REALLY deep. To understand it, prepare to take a a year or two of courses toward a Computer Science degree.

Wondering what's so special about it, I googled generic parser and found this same question was asked here:
http://forums.techguy.org/web-email/590485-generic-parser.html
and in that post this webpage is linked to (the link in the post is broken, but I fix it here):
http://toolbar.live.com/static/sm/03.01.0000.0072/Generic.htm
This brings up a blank PINK webpage in Firefox, and it doesn't seem to do anything. Looking at the page source (a real nerdy thing to do) shows it has some javascript code that I suppose does something, probably some parsing...
So I Googled that URL (another one of my sneaky nerd techniques) and it looks like there's someone asking about it here:
http://forum.telecharger.01net.com/...rer_7_____resolu_merci-334243/messages-1.html
The language used there looks like French, and putting the URL into Bablefish (http://babelfish.yahoo.com/) and translating French to English gets:
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translat...3/messages-1.html&lp=fr_en&btnTrUrl=Translate
The fifth post seems to be saying this URL in the history is related to the MSN toolbar, which I presume you have installed. Apparently the MSN toolbar somehow uses that, so it's no big deal that it's in the history.

kdnxdr said:

So, if a person who wouldn't really know anything about generic parsers had a black screen come up on their computer that was identified as a generic parser, is it possible that for what ever was being received could hypothetically be in need of translation, such as Russian (for example)?

Could it be, hypothetically, used to receive something that had been "scrambled" so as to go undetected through a filter/block?

Could it be , hypothetically, to receive something that the transmittor did not want traced back to the point of origination, as a tree of obscure ips's?

I'm just guessing here because I have absolutely no idea of what I'm talking about. I've just been trying to understand what simplistic activity a very simplistic person might do in order to have to do it with a generic parser because it seems to routinely show up that someone has used a generic parser on the computer and there are only two people who use that particular computer.

Click to expand...

As I said in the post above, it has to do with the MSN/Microsoft Toolbar. I'm sure it has NOTHING to do with what you're hypothesizing about.

I did look at the source code for that site, it appears to be javascript code that saves your name, address, email address and whatnot on your computer when you enter these into a webform, and when you then go to some other webform it automatically fills these fields in for you. That's just my guess, but that's kinda what it looks like.

Ick, MSN toolbar. It really does help to know what the question is *sigh* Everyone should clean up browser cache and history once in a while. A computer-illiterate person does not knowingly use any kind of parser. The whole generic parser question is a red herring, there isn't a clue in it. What, by the way, constitutes "questionable other-type sites in the browser bar/history"?