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Re: Are multi-language languages unique to the XML familyof la

• From: Jim DeLaHunt <list+xml-dev@jdlh.com>
• To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
• Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2022 15:31:48 -0800

On 2022-03-05 15:02, Roger L Costello wrote:

…Other than the XML family of languages, are there languages that are multi-language languages? Or, is this a phenomena unique to the XML family of languages?

Oh, there are many. This phenomenon is not unique to the XML family of languages. I would go so far as to say it is the norm.

Example 1: Regular expressions in the Python programming language

s = r"\s\tWord"
prog = re.compile(s)

From the Python language point of view, s has a character string value. It turns out that this value is an expression in a different language, the Python regular expression language. (This particular regular expression is very simple. It has no repetition operators like '*' or '+'.) Read more about Python and regular expressions at my answer <https://stackoverflow.com/a/13836171/1099571> to the Stack Overflow question, What exactly is a "raw string regex" and how can you use it?

Example 2: Human-readable text in just about any language

s = "This is human-readable text"

This expression is a valid in many different programming languages. s has a character string value. It turns out that this value is an expression in a different language, the English language.

-- 
    --Jim DeLaHunt, jdlh@jdlh.com     http://blog.jdlh.com/ (http://jdlh.com/)
      multilingual websites consultant

• References:
  • Are multi-language languages unique to the XML family of languages?
    • From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>