Hello,
I'd like to introduce an article which might be of some interest:
Reusing XML Processing Code in non-XML Applications
HTML: http://uucode.com/texts/genxml/genxml.html
PDF: http://uucode.com/texts/genxml/genxml.pdf
<abstract>
XML can be considered as a representation of hierarchical
data, and the XML-related standards - as methods of processing
such data. We describe benefits of XML view on legacy data and
its processing, and suggest a method to develop XML tools and
make them reusable for different tree-like structures in
different programming languages.
Our approach is to use virtual machine technology, in
particular, the Scheme programming language. We're taking the
unusual step of using the Scheme syntax itself as a native
virtual machine language. Together with the SXML format and
Scheme implementations tuning, it gives us the XML virtual
machine (XML VM).
Reference implementations are ready for the Python and C
languages. We describe a library for XSLT-like transformations
of the Python parse trees and a special version of the GNU find
utility which supports XPath queries over the file system.
</abstract>
The article needs some rework. Unfortunately, I don't know
when I'll find time for it, so I publish it as is.
