Getting the content of any specific tag anywhere in an XML file with Python

Question

I have an XML file like this:

<file>
  <dict>
    <element>
      <s>text</s>
      <i>56</i>
<s>foobar</s>   <--- strange formatting issues cause it to be below the root tag
      ... more tags like these

    </element>
    ...more <element>s like above
  </dict>
</file>

How can I get the content between all <s> and </s> tags in the entire file, no matter where the tags are? I'm running Python 3.10.4 and I prefer using the builtin xml module. (If I need to use a different one, I'd be OK with that!)

(Also, assume I don't want to fix the <s>foobar<\s> issue.)

Output I want:

text
foobar
...more content from between <s></s> tags

Answer 1

There is no easy answer, you'll have to either implement operations for 256 bits integers (still not going to help your division, where you should use a scaling factor to represent your numbers), implement operations for a fixed point representation, or operations for a floating point representation (mantissa + exponent), none of which are trivial endeavors.

For a 256 bits arithmetic, someone had created a proof of concept (but not battle tested): https://github.com/KStasi/clarity-uint256-lib. She was using 4 uint64 to be able to use uint128 arithmetic without overflows.
Here's a 16 bits multiplication using an 8 bit multiplier:https://www.techiedelight.com/multiply-16-bit-integers-using-8-bit-multiplier/. You'll need to do similar things with 128 bit numbers.

Similarly, here are some pointers for doing a division with lower precision arithmetic: http://www.mattmillman.com/mcs-48-the-quest-for-16-bit-division-on-the-8-bit-cpu-which-cant-divide-anything/

Instead of using a scaling factor, an other approach would be to use fixed point representation. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_arithmetic for theory, and https://schaumont.dyn.wpi.edu/ece4703b20/lecture6.html for more practical considerations (some DSPs have the same issue, they only have integer operations).

Answer 2

The problem here is that the scientific notations are not the same for both the operations. For example,
2.5/4 = 6.25E16 * 10^-1 (scaled up)
2.5*4 = 100 * 10^-1 (scaled down)
Here you can simply just add -16 to the exponent part if you are multiplying 1e16 in the mantissa. So your answer becomes 2.5/4 = 6.25E16 * 10^-1 (scaled up)
2.5/4 = 6.25E16 * 10^-1 * 10^-16
2.5/4 = 6.25E16 * 10^-17
2.5/4 = 0.625

With this, both your multiplication and division are in scientific notations and result in the actual numbers.