David Tolpin wrote:
declarative, functional?
XSLT is not declarative, perl is as
functional as XSLT.
reference the following article
http://www.topxml.com/xsl/articles/fp/
I accept Dimitre's contention that xslt is a
true functional language.
Although i seem to remember that some people
on the haskell list or the functional
programming list weren't as willing to
accept that as ultimate proof.
also i had to get out of bed and get the
xslt programmer's reference off the shelf:
page 13, 4th paragraph:
"So how is using xslt to perform
transformation on xml better than writing
custom applications? Well, the design of
xslt is based on a recognition that these
programs are all very similar, and it should
therefore be possible to describe what they
do using a high-level declarative language
rather than writing each program from
scratch..."
If I look here:
http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~frans/OldLectures/2
CS24/declarative.html
I have to say xslt sure looks declarative to
me, and it sure don't look imperative. So
what did you think it was?
I don't know Perl, looked at it once and
thought, i hate this. But I wasn't under the
impression that Perl is a functional
language. If you can point me to something
showing perl is a functional language I
would be grateful.
Now I haven't read the latest draft of xslt
2.0 but from what I recall of the earlier
ones it still struck me as retaining the
declarative flavor, and was more clearly
a 'real' functional language.
conspires to destroy xslt?
this was tongue in cheek, since I haven't
read the latest draft I can't comment on if
the things I hated are still there, but I
suppose they still are.
I just think that XSLT 2.0 is very close
to Perl, Python and Ruby,
just not yet as mature. What's the need
for one more language in
this family?
I'm thinking that your definition of close
to and my definition of close to are very
different.... So if I had to build a server,
or a media player or something similar, my
choice of xslt instead of python would not
seem like I had flipped my lid? Because they
are close to each other.
I realize of course that this cannot be your
argument. your argument must be that xslt
2.0 is now a full-fledged text processing
language, this would explain references to
awk in other emails, and you ask why someone
would want to use xslt 2.0 instead of Perl,
a language with powerful text manipulation
capabilities.
well this reminds me of those blog posts I
see around saying: xslt is too difficult and
whatever I can do in xslt I can do just as
easy in language x, the coolest language
ever, and as an example contrast an xslt
heavy with xsl:for-each and xsl:choose,
xsl:attribute, low on xsl:template and
attribute={$myvar} with a program written in
language x.
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