Re: XSLT is a pattern-action language. So is AWK. What

 Patterns, and the pieces that make up a pattern, do have an underlying grammar, but I can understand that putting various pieces together it may not be obviously clear what is going to happen or what the side effects will be. Also, there is a temptation to want to put EVERYTHING into one glorious pattern and do the match. It can be done, but it takes a lot of care.
Also, to the original statement. Snobol/Spitbol, especially using the construct of a table or line-based patterns, there is never a need for a linear search.
I noticed this similarity in .xslt with the use of the XPath expressions. Very elegant construct. So glad I never had to learn how to parse the DOM model.
Approaching Snobol/Spitbol and .xslt, imo, requires you to have to a different mindset if you are to write elegant programs.
thanks,
Russ
    On Wednesday, December 11, 2024 at 08:46:04 AM CST, G. Ken Holman g.ken.holman@xxxxxxxxx <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:   

 I did mean something else, sorry. Lexically, yes, strings need to be closed.

It was a long time ago, but my recollection is that the syntax 
allowed any combination of tokens and that combination would mean 
something. I wouldn't get a syntax error that the order of tokens was 
wrong, or that declarations were missing, or that some concatenations 
were nonsensical, or some such.

But recollections are faulty ... it was just what came to mind when 
Mike posted.

At 11/12/2024 14:20 +0000, russurquhart1@xxxxxxxxxxx 
russurquhart1@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>I love Snobol/Spitbol and have used it from my college days to the 
>present for text processing of non-xml files. I love it and am so 
>confortable with using it. As I learned Snobol before GREP was 
>available, I never go into Regular expression very much.
>
>I'm not sure what you mean that there are no syntax errors in 
>Snobol. When I first started learning it, and every so often now, I 
>can generate a syntax error. for example, forget to close a quote 
>character around a string, etc that'll generate an error, or did you 
>mean something else?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Russ
>
>On Wednesday, December 11, 2024 at 06:48:30 AM CST, Michael Kay 
>michaelkay90@xxxxxxxxx <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
>What I hated about SNOBOL (in 1979? 1978?) was that there was no 
>such thing as a syntax error.
>Regular expressions seem to have inherited that tradition.
>
>Michael Kay
>Saxonica
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