Recognition and completion of incomplete XML documents

Abstract

In XML documents, To miss markup tag is one of common factors generating incomplete inputs. Usually, editors will recognize incomplete inputs as syntax errors. And so, when editors find them, they will highlight lines in which syntax errors happened, and execute appropriate error handling routines. But, there are no more parsing actions. In this paper, we propose a method to recognize incomplete input strings and keep parsing phases going. To recognize parts missed grammatically in incomplete inputs and create them newly, we use an expanding parsing table. It includes additional parsing actions for newly generated input symbols. Through the information, incomplete inputs will be completed and parsing steps will be finished successively. Therefore, users can be assured that they make always correct XML documents, even if inputs are incomplete, and can not be nervous about input faults.