xml-dev - Re: XML syntax for XPath?

[Paul Tchistopolskii <paul@qub.com>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>

> Simon St.Laurent wrote:
> >
> > Yes, but it might be interesting to create an 'XPath parser' which reads
> in
> > XPath and spits out SAX events, making these critters a bit easier to
> > process and transform internally.  Then maybe an XPath writer which takes
> > those events and reports them as XPath again.
> 
>     So what you want is an XPath grove parser.
> >
> > If only I didn't have a firm January 1 deadline...
> 
>     There are 39 productions in XPath so developing the property set should
> take just a few hours :-) The thought involves how to *prune* the XPath
> grove into something more useful.

BTW, James Clark has published the yacc grammar for Xpath. 

If I recall proprely, the worstest problem with Xpath was tokenization, 
there are some tokens that are based on context. 
If I recall properly, it took me one day to write the working 
prototype of Xpath compiler, but then I realized that Xpath->SAX looks 
useless. 

Also, one can grab Xpath compiler from XT ( or SAXON )  
XT code is cool. I don't know about SAXON -  have not cheked it.

Rgds.Paul.