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Asked: 2026-05-15T15:40:18+00:00

(Not sure if this should be CW or not, you’re welcome to comment if

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(Not sure if this should be CW or not, you’re welcome to comment if you think it should be).

At my workplace, we have many many different file formats for all kinds of purposes. Most, if not all, of these file formats are just written in plain text, with no consistency. I’m only a student working part-time, and I have no experience with using xml in production, but it seems to me that using xml would improve productivity, as we often need to parse, check and compare these outputs.

So my questions are: given that I can only control one small application and its output (only – the inputs are formats that are used in other applications as well), is it worth trying to change the output to be xml-based? If so, what are the best known ways to do that in C++ (i.e., xml parsers/writers, etc.)? Also, should I also provide a plain-text output to make it easy for the users (which are also programmers) to get used to xml? Should I provide a script to translate xml-plaintext? What are your experiences with this subject?

Thanks.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Don’t just use XML because it’s XML.

    Use XML because:

    • other applications (that only accept XML) are going to read your output
    • you have an hierarchical data structure that lends itself perfectly for XML
    • you want to transform the data to other formats using XSL (e.g. to HTML)

    EDIT:

    A nice personal experience:

    Customer: your application MUST be able to read XML.

    Me: Er, OK, I will adapt my application so it can read XML.

    Same customer (a few days later): your application MUST be able to read fixed width files, because we just realized our mainframe cannot generate XML.

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