Parsing

The data to parse is a source string. A template is a model specifying how to split the source string. The simplest kind of template consists of only a list of variable names. For example:

variable1 variable2 variable3

This kind of template parses the source string into blank-delimited words. More complicated templates contain patterns in addition to variable names.

String patterns

Match characters in the source string to specify where to split it. See Templates that contain string patterns.

Positional patterns

Indicate the character positions at which to split the source string. See Templates that contain positional (numeric) patterns.

Parsing is essentially a two-step process.

1. Parse the source string into appropriate substrings by using patterns.
2. Parse each substring into words.