Difference between [parsing] and [extracting]?

Question

Currently we have 7 parsing questions (with 8 followers) and 9 extracting questions (with 3 followers). Is there really a difference between these two tags? Or should we merge them instead? If so, which one should we keep?

Also, Wikipedia defines parsing as the process of analysing a string of symbols, either in natural language or in computer languages, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. Looking through our current parsing questions, I'm not sure that any of them fit this definition.

What do you think?

Answer 1

Parsing and extracting are distinct for me. Extracting is the collecting (downloading), while parsing is the transformation (e.g. "ETL - Extract, Transform, Load").

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Some examples of how I see it:

Extracting - collecting data

• Monthly data in Google Trends

• What is the best way to get airline schedule data from pdf files

• Wikipedia table to JSON (or other machine-readable format)

Parsing - turning data into information

• Good tools to parse repetitive unstructured data

• Parsing Curriculum Vitaes (mis-tagged with extracting)

• What does OpenRefine offer that other data-parsing tools don't?