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RE: Your XML document is a programming language

• From: David Lee <dlee@calldei.com>
• To: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>, "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>
• Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2013 12:33:53 +0000

To follow up on Mike's excellent commentary,
I direct the curious readers to one of the best examples (IMHO) 
An entirely transparent programming languages, with the marvelous ability to 
have program listings without a single drop of ink wasted (or used)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_(programming_language)

No angle brackets were harmed for this language.


----------------------------------------
David A. Lee
dlee@calldei.com
http://www.xmlsh.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Kay [mailto:mike@saxonica.com] 
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2013 8:18 AM
To: Costello, Roger L.
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re:  Your XML document is a programming language


On 9 Sep 2013, at 12:59, Costello, Roger L. wrote:

> Hi Folks,
> 
> This is a programming language:
> 
> <Book>
>    <Title>____</Title>
>    <Author>____</Author>
> </Book>
> 
> Don't let the angle brackets and element names deceive you, it is a programming language.
> 
> When I execute this program
> 
> <Book>
>    <Title>Six Great Ideas</Title>
>    <Author>Mortimer Adler</Author>
> </Book>
> 

Hang on, first you tell us that this snippet is a programming language, then you tell us it's a program.

Well, it's easy to see how it is a program. "Beam me up, Scotty" is a program if someone designs a programming language that includes this as one of its permitted constructions, and if the language defines semantics for this sentence. For any string of characters, you can design a programming language in which that string of characters is a program. So you can certainly design a programming language in which your <Book>..</Book> sample is a program. It only becomes an interesting programming language if it is suitable for writing a sufficiently general class of programs, and that's something you have yet to demonstrate.

Michael Kay
Saxonica


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• References:
  • Your XML document is a programming language
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
  • Re: Your XML document is a programming language
    • From: Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>