Representing XML in tables

[Scott Morgan <blumf@...>]

Has there been any standerd way of representing a XML document in a lua 
table structure defined yet?

I'm thinking about the actual structure of the document rather than 
things like Unicode issues and parsing.

i.e. XML like this:

<person id="1234">
 <name>
   <first>John</first>
   <last>Smith</last>
 </name>
</person>

would become a lua table structure like this:

xml = {
 [0] = {
   ["name"] = "person",
   ["attributes"] = {
     ["id"] = "1234"
   }
   ["nodes"] = {
     [0] = {
       ["name"] = "name",
       ["nodes"] = {
         [0] = {
           ["name"] = "first",
           ["value"] = "John"
         }
         [1] = {
           ["name"] = "last",
           ["value"] = "Smith"
         }
       }
     }
   }
 }
}

Which is the best way I've come up with so far. With some helper 
functions this could be quite useful. But is it the best way of doing 
this and am I covering old ground?

Scott Morgan