Parse, Parsing Terms

Good Morning Folks,

I am an IT Professional and trying to get me feet wet with some C# development and client side technologies.

One word which always confuses me is Parse, Parsing. Would you guys be able to answer it precisely for me in regards to Development and Programming.

Also, are routine, method, function, they are different terms or refer to a similar thing?

Thanks in Advance.

Atif Rather

Hello,

Answer to second question first, yes, routine, method and function are "similar" in spirit of the word but not "same". "Routine" is a term, I believe, no longer used because it could mean both a method as well as function, so it is a generic term.

"Method" is a routine which performs a task and will not return a value, for example, showing a message box with just a "OK" button. You want to show messages at several places in your application, so you will write a method and pass a message as a parameter.

"Function" on the other hand, is a routine, which performs a task and returns a value, for example, again, a message box, with "Yes" and "No" buttons and returns which button is pressed by the users. Once again, you may want to ask questions at several places in your application so you will use this function.

Okay, with respect to parse, it is a bit complicated (for me), but I will try:

You have a string "Hello {0},", you have it this way, because you want to put different name each time at "{0}", incidently, it is called "placeholder". So you will "parse" the string for the "placeholder" and replace value at it.

So technically, you parse a string for variety of tasks, for example, to see if it is a number, if it is a date, etc. To see if it contains a specified character or a word, etc.

Hope I have managed to explain, to the best of my ability.

1 Reply

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Nitin Sontakke10y ago
Hello,
Answer to second question first, yes, routine, method and function are "similar" in spirit of the word but not "same". "Routine" is a term, I believe, no longer used because it could mean both a method as well as function, so it is a generic term.
"Method" is a routine which performs a task and will not return a value, for example, showing a message box with just a "OK" button. You want to show messages at several places in your application, so you will write a method and pass a message as a parameter.
"Function" on the other hand, is a routine, which performs a task and returns a value, for example, again, a message box, with "Yes" and "No" buttons and returns which button is pressed by the users. Once again, you may want to ask questions at several places in your application so you will use this function.
Okay, with respect to parse, it is a bit complicated (for me), but I will try:
You have a string "Hello {0},", you have it this way, because you want to put different name each time at "{0}", incidently, it is called "placeholder". So you will "parse" the string for the "placeholder" and replace value at it.
So technically, you parse a string for variety of tasks, for example, to see if it is a number, if it is a date, etc. To see if it contains a specified character or a word, etc.
Hope I have managed to explain, to the best of my ability.