Unparsed

Unparsed refers to data or content that has not yet been interpreted by a parser. It remains in its original form and is typically a sequence of characters or bytes awaiting interpretation according to a grammar, schema, or set of rules.

In software development, parsing converts unparsed input into a structured representation, such as tokens, syntax trees, or objects. Once data is processed, it is no longer considered unparsed. Unparsed data may be retained for deferred processing, streaming parsing, or when multiple downstream parsers handle different formats.

Common contexts include source code in compilers, where source files are unparsed text until lexical analysis, parsing, and semantic analysis occur; data interchange formats like HTTP bodies or messages that arrive as unparsed strings until parsed as JSON, XML, or other formats; logs and telemetry where raw log lines are stored as unparsed text before being parsed into fields; and natural language processing, where raw text remains unparsed until tokenization and parsing steps are applied.

Handling unparsed data involves considerations such as validation and sanitization to prevent security issues, performance tradeoffs between eager and lazy parsing, and error handling for partial or malformed input. Some systems implement streaming or incremental parsing to process unparsed input as it arrives while maintaining controlled memory usage.

In summary, unparsed describes raw input that awaits parsing, and how that input is treated influences ingestion, validation, and the eventual transformation into structured forms.