Paths Into Patterns
Year: 2004
Type: report
Abstract: The XML Path Language (XPath) is an industry standard notation for addressing parts of an XML document. It is supported by many XML processing libraries and has been used as the foundation for several dedicated XML processing languages. Regular patterns, an alternative way of investigating and destructing XML documents, were first proposed in the XDuce language and feature in a number of its descendants. The processing styles offered by XPath and by regular patterns are each quite convenient for certain sorts of tasks, and the designer of a future XML processing language might well like to provide both. This designer might wonder, however, to what extent these mechanisms can be based on a common foundation. Can one be implemented by translating it into the other? Can aspects of both be combined into a single notation? As a first step toward addressing these questions, we show in this paper that a language closely related to the “downward axis ” fragment of XPath can be accurately translated into ambiguous XDuce-style An XPath [16] expression specifies how to traverse an XML value, following one of several possible “axes”
Authors: Vladimir Gapeyev, Benjamin C. Pierce
Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1519786900