Re: is XML too hard?

in reply to is XML too hard?

The problem with XML is that people use it as a datastructure language, while it is just a markup language. The use of XML as datastructure language is a bit artificial - you can structure things by markup but it's not the most efficient way (and you are confined to trees). Why not choose a subset of a programming language - they were designed to be efficient in describing datastructures in a human readible format.

Comment on Re: is XML too hard?

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Re^2: is XML too hard? by diotalevi (Canon) on Mar 17, 2003 at 20:18 UTC
And of course, "datastructure" is data plus context. That's exactly what XML provides. It is a "datastructure" format.	[reply]
Re: Re^2: is XML too hard? by zby (Vicar) on Mar 17, 2003 at 20:31 UTC
It is. I don't say that it is not. I just say it is not a good one. By good one I define one that would be efficient in describing the datastructures we encounter most frequently in our programming practice - a general one. XML is well suited for describing structure in text document's not general programming datastructures. The issue is quite subtle - but look at XML::Simple. It tries to make a tree datastructure from XML file, but to do it it needs to make so many gueses that for quite uncomplicated structures you get anomalies - for instance when you save the structure build from XML and get some entirely different XML.	[reply]

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