XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[passani AT eunet.no]

Elliotte, be brave and put some ideas down for us to see.
With your understanding of XML *and* developers, you
are one of the best positioned to do this.
It might be what makes XOM rock even more one day.
Add regexps to XPATH? or callbacks?
a new way to analyse XML which is more powerful
than regexps alone, but which doesn't turn entities
into landmines?  be creative! go nuts!

Luca


> What Bray is suggesting here is a sort of XML-aware regular expression
> language. He very well understands that current regular-expression
> languages are inadequate for handling XML.
>
> One thing I have seen some people do is define a new, very inflexible
> syntax for XML infosets that resolves things like character entity
> references, insignificant white space, quotes around attribute values,
> and so forth; then write a program to convert XML documents into this
> new syntax; and then query the new syntax with regular expressions. It's
> a hack, but it works.
>
> In essence Bray is here proposing to build the alternate, less-flexible
> syntax into the regular expression engine. Perhaps a good idea, but it
> does need a new engine/language. The existing ones can't do this.