# Name that DDL!

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/name-that-ddl/182853>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [February 3, 2010, 9:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/name-that-ddl/182853 "2010-02-03T21:23:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![vyper](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/858c86/32.png) [@vyper](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vyper)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2010, 9:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/name-that-ddl/182853/1 "2010-02-03T21:23:26Z")

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Hi all,

I’m working on writing a Ruby script to SSH into one of our VMware  
Servers  
and do a little command line work for me. The challenge is that some of  
the  
output is in some kind of data definition language I don’t recognize.

A page with example output:  
[http://www.vi-toolkit.com/wiki/index.php/Vmsvc/get.filelayout](http://www.vi-toolkit.com/wiki/index.php/Vmsvc/get.filelayout)

Anyone recognize it off the top of their heads? If it all comes down to  
it I can parse out the information I need the hard way, but I’m hoping  
that  
I can find a library to do the painful stuff for me.

Thanks in advance!

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**Author:** ![vyper](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/858c86/32.png) [@vyper](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vyper)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2010, 9:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/name-that-ddl/182853/2 "2010-02-03T21:58:27Z")

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Walton H. wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I’m working on writing a Ruby script to SSH into one of our VMware  
> Servers  
> and do a little command line work for me. The challenge is that some of  
> the  
> output is in some kind of data definition language I don’t recognize.
> 
> A page with example output:  
> [Vmsvc/get.filelayout - VI-Toolkit](http://www.vi-toolkit.com/wiki/index.php/Vmsvc/get.filelayout)
> 
> Anyone recognize it off the top of their heads? If it all comes down to  
> it I can parse out the information I need the hard way, but I’m hoping  
> that  
> I can find a library to do the painful stuff for me.
> 
> Thanks in advance!

This has nothing to do with Ruby, and might be better asked on a VMWare  
support forum. The output almost looks like JSON with types…

Best,  
–Â  
Marnen Laibow-Koser  
[http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org)  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vyper](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/858c86/32.png) [@vyper](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vyper)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2010, 10:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/name-that-ddl/182853/3 "2010-02-03T22:57:09Z")

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Otherwise (if you don’t find a library that already recognizes your  
output)  
a grammar written with Treetop ([GitHub - nathansobo/treetop: A Ruby-based parsing DSL based on parsing expression grammars.](http://github.com/nathansobo/treetop))  
could  
be the simplest way…

Bernard

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vyper](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/858c86/32.png) [@vyper](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vyper)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2010, 11:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/name-that-ddl/182853/4 "2010-02-03T23:23:42Z")

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On 2/3/2010 2:56 PM, LAMBEAU Bernard wrote:

> Otherwise (if you don’t find a library that already recognizes your output)  
> a grammar written with Treetop ([GitHub - nathansobo/treetop: A Ruby-based parsing DSL based on parsing expression grammars.](http://github.com/nathansobo/treetop)) could  
> be the simplest way…
> 
> Bernard

Ohhh! Thank you! That looks like it will make writing a parser _much_  
easier. I had thought  
about trying to do this with Bison/Flex, but I really didn’t want to  
write this in C.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vyper](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/858c86/32.png) [@vyper](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vyper)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2010, 11:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/name-that-ddl/182853/5 "2010-02-03T23:38:10Z")

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LAMBEAU Bernard wrote:

> Otherwise (if you don’t find a library that already recognizes your  
> output)  
> a grammar written with Treetop ([GitHub - nathansobo/treetop: A Ruby-based parsing DSL based on parsing expression grammars.](http://github.com/nathansobo/treetop))  
> could  
> be the simplest way…

Hey, great idea! Treetop is lovely and very simple to use.

> Bernard

Best,  
–Â  
Marnen Laibow-Koser  
[http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org)  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid