Re: [xml-dev] M as the next XML?

I think there is still a lot more to do in order to break the wall between documents and objects !

I dream of a language where we could do :

data.txt :
person { name = "john", surname = "dow" }

data = load("data.txt");

That load creating both the squeleton of classes, and its instances.

And then access/modify data as if it was a document :

add(data, "//person[name = 'john'][surname = 'dow']", account = "54335");

All that expression "//person[name = 'john'][surname = 'dow']" as a string, that way that could be generically generated from a database, or a configuration file.

You could say that is already what is possible in XML, but still lots of developpers will ask you to have a real object tree, like :

var persons = data.person;
foreach person in persons {
    if (person.name == "john" and person.surname == "dow") {
         person.account = "54335";
    }
}

See all the marshaller/unmarshaller APIs you find on the web in order to do that ! I do not think I will ever understand why people are so fan of those generated POJO objects.

I only saw a bit about JSON, but it seems they made some steps in that direction.

Regards
Nico
http://debeissat.nicolas.free.fr/programming.php