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From: gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu>
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Subject: Re: The remarkable similarities between Flex/Lex and XSLT
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2022 06:43:43 -0700 (PDT)
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On Friday, June 24, 2022 at 6:00:44 AM UTC-7, Roger L Costello wrote:

> XSLT is a language for processing XML documents.

> There are remarkable similarities between Flex/Lex and XSLT. Lex was created
> 47 years ago, long before XSLT. One wonders if some members of the XSLT 1.0
> Working Group were Lex users and were influenced by its concepts?

> Here are some of the similarities between Flex/Lex and XSLT:

> Both are pattern-matching languages, i.e.,

I was thinking, but didn't post yet, about the different ways of writing pattern
matching languages.  Well, more specifically about parsing languages,
but even more about the pattern matching part.

I wrote recently about STEP, which has an input language somewhat
different from yacc/bison for describing a parser.

And even more, if there should be a language for writing pattern
matching languages in.

That is, do we need a compiler-compiler-compiler.

It does seem rare that one starts from scratch in defining a new
computer language, even though not a general purpose
programming language.
[Pattern-action goes back at least to RPG in 1959, and it was
based on the way plugboard accounting machines work. -John]