Re: The remarkable similarities between Flex/Lex and XSLT

gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu>
Fri, 24 Jun 2022 06:43:43 -0700 (PDT)

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Related articles
The remarkable similarities between Flex/Lex and XSLT costello@mitre.org (Roger L Costello) (2022-06-24)
Re: The remarkable similarities between Flex/Lex and XSLT gah4@u.washington.edu (gah4) (2022-06-24)
Compiler-compiler-compiler christopher.f.clark@compiler-resources.com (Christopher F Clark) (2022-06-25)
Re: The remarkable similarities between Flex/Lex and XSLT matt.timmermans@gmail.com (matt.ti...@gmail.com) (2022-06-25)
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From: gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2022 06:43:43 -0700 (PDT)
Organization: Compilers Central
References: 22-06-073
Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="80752"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com"
Keywords: lex, design, comment
Posted-Date: 24 Jun 2022 19:58:55 EDT
In-Reply-To: 22-06-073

On Friday, June 24, 2022 at 6:00:44 AM UTC-7, Roger L Costello wrote:


> XSLT is a language for processing XML documents.


> There are remarkable similarities between Flex/Lex and XSLT. Lex was created
> 47 years ago, long before XSLT. One wonders if some members of the XSLT 1.0
> Working Group were Lex users and were influenced by its concepts?


> Here are some of the similarities between Flex/Lex and XSLT:


> Both are pattern-matching languages, i.e.,


I was thinking, but didn't post yet, about the different ways of writing pattern
matching languages. Well, more specifically about parsing languages,
but even more about the pattern matching part.


I wrote recently about STEP, which has an input language somewhat
different from yacc/bison for describing a parser.


And even more, if there should be a language for writing pattern
matching languages in.


That is, do we need a compiler-compiler-compiler.


It does seem rare that one starts from scratch in defining a new
computer language, even though not a general purpose
programming language.
[Pattern-action goes back at least to RPG in 1959, and it was
based on the way plugboard accounting machines work. -John]

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