Comments on: XML Pattern Matching and Functional Programming

By: Immanuel Normann

Immanuel Normann — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:52:16 +0000

The Scheme XML tools in fact does not have a very active community. Nonetheless, these tools work well. I used them once for a plugin to import OpenMath into TeXmacs. And you can use also your XPath inside these sxml tools - look, for instance, at Example 10: (sxpath "bib/book[@year > 1993][position()<=2]") from the sxml tutorial

By: Christoph

Christoph — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:52:04 +0000

Yes, I just left our “in XSLT” in that sentence and didn’t realize the ambiguity. Of course I know that actual functional languages are not awkward – they may just be awkward for pattern matching. Just compare: If I want to match an OMDoc theory in Scala, I have to write “(theory) { _* } (/theory)“, whereas in XPath I can simply write “theory” – replace (…) by angle brackets; WordPress doesn’t allow them.

Thanks for the Scheme link! It doesn’t really look like an active project, but I’ve always liked the Lisp way of thinking.

OK, so you would recommend HXT – I’ll have a look. Oh, I see, I’ve had a look into that before and didn’t read carefully enough. They do support an XPath-like shorthand notation for addressing nodes.

I think that Xcerpt is not suitable, because I want to do different things: no inference, but translation, and the translation in a slightly more complex way that Xcerpt would offer me for free.

Thanks!

By: Immanuel Normann

Immanuel Normann — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:12:33 +0000

I suppose you meant “Functional programming is awkward but possible in *XSLT*”. It is not awkward in (at least two) other functional programming languages.

I can recommend the Scheme XML tools (http://modis.ispras.ru/Lizorkin/sxml-tutorial.html) or the Haskell XML Toolbox (HXT) (http://www.fh-wedel.de/~si/HXmlToolbox/).
You may consider also the deductive and rule-based query language for graph-structured data “XCerpt” which is build on top of HXT.