[Xpath-ng] My favorite XPath language

[Waleed_Abdulla at ahm.honda.com]

I agree Berend.

I think we shouldn't try to make XPath a full-fledged programming language.
If we're going to add all the features of XQuery to it, then we might as
well call it XQuery 2.0!!

    The beauty of XPath is that it's a simple node selection syntax, and
it's very good at what it does.

My $0.02,
Waleed










Berend de Boer <berend at xsol.com>@lists.fourthought.com on 11/21/2002
11:32:36 PM

Sent by:    xpath-ng-admin at lists.fourthought.com


To:    xpath-ng at lists.fourthought.com
cc:
Subject:    Re: [Xpath-ng] My favorite XPath language

David Rosenborg wrote:

>This aspect is also much related to "the means of abstraction".  XPath 1.0
>has no means of abstraction. Adding user defined functions would
>be a great step filling that hole. And I'd rather have the function
mechanism
>inside XPath Ng rather to be depending a host language. The reason for
that
>is that it would be valuable to reuse libraries of user defined functions
>indenpendent of host language. And to be able to create indenpendent
>libraries of user defined functions you would need variable binding
>and namespace declaration primitives.
>
I'm afraid if you follow this path you will end up with XSLT x.x. Isn't
XPath just a node selection language? Should it not stay that way?

Extensions can be another language, but it probably depends on the
domain what language is best. Turning XPath into a Turing complete
language doesn't appeal to me.

>Why function library import?
>--------------------------
>
>This might be more of a nice to have, but if widespread use of libraries
of user
>defined functions become a reality, a library import facility would make
>their usage more convenient.
>
Perhaps an import function might be good enough? The actual code can be
written in whatever language.


>Why list type?
>--------------------------
>
>As soon as you start using functions you'll find situations where you
>want to return more then one value, or pass arbitrary structures,
>containing values of arbitrary types, as arguments. A simple list
>data type enables all that.
>
That looks indeed useful to me. But it will also turn XPath from a
selection language into a node creation language. So it will move from
its core.

Regards,

Berend. (-:

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