[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Expand XPath with a few abstractions and use it as
Hi Roger, Xpath already can be used as a programming language (remember our joint paper at Balisage-2013?). And it has fn:transform(), so rewriting XSLT in XPath seems redundant. I think that what XPath needs is a few additions to the XDM (such as having types as first-class objects of the language) and writing some fundamental function libraries for adding a few new fundamental data-types. I have been working on this and have been inspired by the current results and by what they show can be further achieved. I believe that by doing this XPath can be made at least as expressive and powerful as Python. Thanks, Dimitre On Wed, Jun 29, 2022 at 4:12 AM Roger L Costello costello@xxxxxxxxx < xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi Folks, > > Recently I was reading about Ratfor (Rational Fortran). Ratfor is a layer > on top of Fortran. > > Fortran does not provide nice control structures such as the while-loop. > Instead, you have to use labels and gotos. The resulting (spaghetti-like) > program imposes a large cognitive load on the developer and maintainer. > Writing Fortran programs is unreasonably difficult and error prone. > > So some clever fellow created Ratfor, which provides abstractions such as > the while loop. The abstractions make it much easier to write and maintain > programs. A preprocessor converts the Ratfor into equivalent Fortran. For > example, the preprocessor converts the while-loop into equivalent labels > and gotos. > > I really like XSLT. In my experience, however, the verbosity of its XML > syntax imposes a substantial cognitive load on the developer and > maintainer. This makes implementing large and/or complex programs > unreasonably difficult and error prone. > > In my opinion, XPath, with its concise notation would be a superior > language for programming large and/or complex programs. If XPath were > enhanced with a few things, such as apply-templates (as was discussed a > couple weeks ago), it would make for a programming language that is easier > to write and maintain programs. > > In the spirit of Ratfor, it seems that it should be possible to write a > preprocessor that converts "expanded-XPath" into equivalent XSLT/XPath. Has > anyone done this -- created an expanded-XPath and a preprocessor which > converts expanded-XPath into equivalent XSLT/XPath? > > /Roger
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