Reading is defined as interpreting and understanding a written material.
Parsing is defined as analyzing relationships between words in a written material and grouping those words according to underlying grammar.
My question is, what is the correct terminology for the process of reading a simple config and creating data structures corresponding to the data we acquired, parsing or reading?
I read many places about this distinction but I wasn't able to arrive at a conclusion by myself. In many places these terms used in an interchangeable manner. For example:
1. Reading a Lisp object means parsing a Lisp expression in textual form and producing a corresponding Lisp object.
From <http://zvon.org/other/elisp/Output/SEC256.html>
2. In the programming language Lisp, the reader or read function is the parser which converts the textual form of Lisp objects to the corresponding internal object structure.
From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_reader>
So I have a mixed understanding for parsing (grouping tokens in to syntactical elements) and creating data structures by using the elements we get from parsing (interpreting). I would much appreciate clear explanation of these topics and advision of sources where I can make further research about these topics.
There is no single “correct terminology” without context. Words are used with different meanings in different contexts.
Often when discussing computing, “reading” means retrieving data, and “parsing” means analyzing a string of characters or other symbols relative to some rules for their grammar and interpretation. However, these meanings should not be taken as absolute; the words can be used in other ways.