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Re: Transitive closure for XPath
- To: xsl-list at lists dot mulberrytech dot com
- Subject: Re: [xsl] Transitive closure for XPath
- From: Francis Norton <francis at redrice dot com>
- Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 13:42:36 +0100
- References: <003b01c0cc41$a22ef1e0$0100007f@PCUKMKA>
- Reply-To: xsl-list at lists dot mulberrytech dot com
[Sorry about the delayed response]
Michael Kay wrote:
>
> > So we would still have a closure() function but have a notation for
> > delayed evaluation:
> >
> > closure(/closure/node[1], delay::key("myKey", @child))
> >
>
> The concept you are looking for is "higher-order functions", available in
> many functional programming languages. The concept is consistent with the
> XPath conceptual model, but disagreeable to those who want the language to
> stop short of being a general purpose programming language.
>
I don't want to see XSLT becoming a general purpose programming language
but I would like to see it become an exceedingly good XML transformation
language.
Closure looks to me very like a solution to the "parts explosion"
problem in SQL - did support for this ever reach one of the SQL
standards?
It seems to be a wide and relevent requirement for a language
specialised to manipulating a specific type of data structure.
Francis.
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