Python AST as XML

[Andy Dingley]

On 27 Oct 2004 23:09:02 -0700, olepar at gmail.com (Oleg Paraschenko)
wrote:

>maybe of some interest:

Maybe 5 years ago, before we realised what a bad idea it was.


>http://pysch.sourceforge.net/ast.html
>
>[quote]
>XML can be considered as an external representation of in-memory
>tree-like structures, 

Yes. But why would I want to ?   XML is a clumsy _internal_
representation and it's only useful as an external representation if
you need some lowest-common-denominator more than you need a good and
appropriate representation.  The best external representation of
Python is some Python source, not some over-abstracted XML version.


> and XML-related standards as methods of processing such data. 

XML-related protocols don't process data, they process an XML
representation of that data. Their ability to do so is based on the
XML aspect of it, not the underlying data model. This makes them
somewhere between clumsy to develop wiith, or simply incapable of
addressing the problem.

"Lets make all our data standards interwork by using XSLT" was the
theme of late '99.   It didn't work.

-- 
Smert' spamionam