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Date:Mon Feb 2 16:58:53 1995 
Subject:Autocad DXF Files 
From:James Anderson 
Volume-ID:950207.02 

A STORY WITH A MORAL

I have just had the sad experience of writing a parser for Autocad
Data eXchange Format (DXF) files. This format was designed to be read 
by Fortran programs. It has some odd properties.

Has anyone else met a language where certain lexemes must contain a
newline charcter?

Has anyone else written a parser that should (and does) accept tokens in any order -
yes, *any* order - but must preserve the given order?

Has anyone else parsed an Autocad DXF file?

And the moral? Just a question really - why do people design languages like that?

P.S. It is possible that I misunderstood the specification in the Autocad manual.
     It was written in Sweedish, which is barely comprehensible to a reader of
     German.

P.P.S. There is probably another moral there!