Re: [xsl] Kleene Operators

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Terry,

At 08:38 PM 2/28/2010, you wrote:
> I am lucky to have an adjunct teaching job at RIT teaching xml and 
> xsl and started to think about the questions they might ask me about 
> why do we use *,+,?  and wondered if there was some really good 
> answer rather than the operators result in a closed set.

My answer would be simply that they are mathematically well defined, 
have been demonstrated to be useful (striking a balance between 
complexity and capability), and consequently are widely understood 
among developers.

I'd leave the deeper points to the followup questions. In my work -- 
note that I frequently find myself teaching to students who don't 
have CS or even computer programming backgrounds -- I find that these 
can lead in any number of directions. (At least in an academic 
context. And indeed, not having a CS background or even being a 
"programmer" myself, I'm happy to point them to resources in logic or 
CS if that's where they want to go, or if not to keep to fields where 
I feel more at home, such as semiotics or media theory.)

Cheers,
Wendell



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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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