[SML] Whether to support Attribute or not?

[Clark C. Evans]

On Mon, 29 Nov 1999, Pavel Velikhov wrote:
> > > <Thing>
> > >  <Id>foo</Id>
> > > </Thing>
> > >
> > > But, well.... yuck.  This is just... strange.
> > >
> > > Doesn't it strike you as perverse to dive into the sub-elements of an
> > > element to get a handle to the parent?
> > 
> > Yes it does.  It also requires that the _entire_ element be read
> > in (till its end tag is encountered) just in the case that a child
> > provides details which modify the parent -- in this case, the
> > parent's identifier.
> > 
> 
> But every child provides details that modify the parent.
> Consider this element:
> 
> <home>
> 	<zip>91111</zip>
> </home>
> 
> And then the following element:
> 
> <home>
> 	<local_schools>
> 		<school>S1</school>
> 		<school>S2</school>
> 		...
> 	</local_schools>
> </home>
> 
> Same problem here, right? Every child modifies the parent.
> Should not these cases be all semantically equivalent?

If you have to "dig" into the contents to figure
out which "processing pipeline" the content is
placed on then you have effectively elminated
all hope of sequential processing.  Thus, you 
need random access to the information stream.
And hence, "large" memory requiremens, thus
undermining the apparant "simplicity" of SML.

Hope this explains my thoughts on it better.

Clark


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