Hi Roger,

Xpath already can be used as a programming language (remember our joint
paper at Balisage-2013?).
And it has fn:transform(), so rewriting XSLT in XPath seems redundant.

I think that what XPath needs is a few additions to the XDM (such as having
types as first-class objects of the language) and writing some fundamental
function libraries for adding a few new fundamental data-types. I have been
working on this and have been inspired by the current results and by what
they show can be further achieved.

I believe that by doing this XPath can be made at least as expressive and
powerful as Python.

Thanks,
Dimitre

On Wed, Jun 29, 2022 at 4:12 AM Roger L Costello costello@xxxxxxxxx <
xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> Recently I was reading about Ratfor (Rational Fortran). Ratfor is a layer
> on top of Fortran.
>
> Fortran does not provide nice control structures such as the while-loop.
> Instead, you have to use labels and gotos. The resulting (spaghetti-like)
> program imposes a large cognitive load on the developer and maintainer.
> Writing Fortran programs is unreasonably difficult and error prone.
>
> So some clever fellow created Ratfor, which provides abstractions such as
> the while loop. The abstractions make it much easier to write and maintain
> programs. A preprocessor converts the Ratfor into equivalent Fortran. For
> example, the preprocessor converts the while-loop into equivalent labels
> and gotos.
>
> I really like XSLT. In my experience, however, the verbosity of its XML
> syntax imposes a substantial cognitive load on the developer and
> maintainer. This makes implementing large and/or complex programs
> unreasonably difficult and error prone.
>
> In my opinion, XPath, with its concise notation would be a superior
> language for programming large and/or complex programs. If XPath were
> enhanced with a few things, such as apply-templates (as was discussed a
> couple weeks ago), it would make for a programming language that is easier
> to write and maintain programs.
>
> In the spirit of Ratfor, it seems that it should be possible to write a
> preprocessor that converts "expanded-XPath" into equivalent XSLT/XPath. Has
> anyone done this -- created an expanded-XPath and a preprocessor which
> converts expanded-XPath into equivalent XSLT/XPath?
>
> /Roger