• From: David Lee <dlee@c...>
• To: Michael Kay <mike@s...>, "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>
• Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 13:50:24 +0000

---- Micheal Kay
State machines are essentially flowcharts: programming with GOTOs. 
--------

I am seriously curious.  Could you (or anyone) explain the fundamental difference between
state machines, GOTO's and XSLT ?

To my thinking (perhaps why  I struggle with XSLT) ... an <apply-templates> is essentially a GOTO 
with the current state (the current context)  as input and possibly a 1 or more target states.   and a <template> is a state description.   The pattern matching ,to me, just adds to the difficulty of understanding the GOTO's ... as it makes
understanding what the target of the GOTO harder to comprehend (because it's really a function of the current state,
which can be quite subtle).

So what am I seeing wrong here ?  Maybe if I understood my misconception I would do better at XLST.

-David

----------------------------------------
David A. Lee
dlee@c...
http://www.xmlsh.org

• Follow-Ups:
  • RE: Create a special purpose programming language, in XML, using state transitions
    • From: gkholman@C...
  • Re: Create a special purpose programming language, in XML, using state transitions
    • From: Michael Kay <mike@s...>
  • Re: Create a special purpose programming language, in XML,using state transitions
    • From: Ihe Onwuka <ihe.onwuka@g...>
  • Re: Create a special purpose programming language, in XML,using state transitions
    • From: Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@g...>

• References:
  • Create a special purpose programming language, in XML, using statetransitions
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>
  • Re: Create a special purpose programming language, in XML, using state transitions
    • From: Michael Kay <mike@s...>