Re: Representing XML in tables

[Scott Morgan <blumf@...>]

Andy Stark wrote:

> Scott Morgan:-
>  
>
> > 1) What happens if you have xml like <item _tag_="PITA">, not likely , 
> > but possible.
> >    
>
> I agree that this kind of "inband signalling" is not perfect. An easy
> alternative would be 
>
> xmlRoot = {["?tag"] = "person"... }
>
> Of course it doesn't have to be a question mark; any character that is
> invalid in XML names will do. Feature request for Lua: allow an extra
> character (such as "?") as a valid character in identifiers:-
>
> 	?tag = "person"
>  
This seems over kill to my mind as its much simpler to push all the 
attribute key/values into their own sub table.

> > 2) Getting at the value held by the table is a bit difficult, in the 
> > 'name' and 'occupation' nodes it's at [1], but in the 'person' node it's 
> > at [3]... Idealy all values stored should not be assumed to be 
> > of type string.
> >    
>
> The value stored need not be a string, but I don't think we can do much
> about the variable position of the text data. XML allows you to have more
> than one area of text separated by other elements:-
>
> 	<div>
> 		Hello<br/>
> 		and goodbye
> 	</div>
>  
Ah, you're quiet right here. It'd probaly be best to maintain document 
structure. Mayeb we'd have to make a scarifice and say that values can 
not be tables.

Scott Morgan