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What is the value in non-invasivity?
XML is a context-free language. Perl is effective at matching regular
expressions. I have found in almost every circumstance that Perl +
byte-stream is always more complicated that XML based processing (ie. using
DOM, SAX, XSLT etc, possibly in conjunction with a higher level language
like perl).
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean McGrath [mailto:sean.mcgrath@propylon.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 1:02 AM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Suggestions for a slightly less verbose (and
> easier to author) XML
>
>
> Tim Bray]
> [
> >I don't think any of them are cost-effective. If you're
> not 100% sure
> what you're getting,
> >use a real XML processor and the problems go away. -Tim
>
> I won't go over the old ground again [1] but this is where
> the problems start
> rather than go away for read/write XML applications.
>
> If I use Perl or something, my app is simple, non-invasive to the
> byte-stream, but possibly
> wrong. If I use an infoset (e.g. I parse the source) my app
> is not simple,
> invasive to
> the byte stream but right.
>
> Achieving non-invasivity + correctness only comes at the
> expense of simplicity.
>
> For nuclear reactors and heart monitors, we need correctness.
> Sadly it
> appears that
> complexity is thus thrust upon us. All because, in my
> opinion, there is no way
> to specify, up front and personal, that your XML data DOES
> NOT use CDATA
> sections,
> tags embedded in comments, internal doctype subsets, pi's in
> the epilog
> etc. etc.
>
> If I had such a thing in the XML rec, I could rest easy with my simple
> Perl (actually Python :-) programs even in the face of
> possible upstream
> changes.
>
> Sean
>
> [1] http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200102/msg00584.html
>
>
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