XML tutorials and examples
Introduction
When fixed character width data file formats become too complex, with for example the number of columns depending on values in previous columns or from data in other files, the effort to write parsers to read and write the information and make sure it is correctly understood becomes very time- and resource consuming. One possible solution is to use an XML format for the data exchange files, in order to draw from the large amount of packages and libraries already written to parse such documents. In this page you will find links and examples that will help with getting familiar with the XML format and how to write tools utilizing it.
XML Overview
See the Wikipedia entry for XML for a description of the XML markup language, link here. Especially take note of the terminology of the different parts of the XML structure.