Re: [xsl] XSLT is a pattern-action language. So is AWK. What others?

["G. Ken Holman g.ken.holman@xxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What I hated about SNOBOL (in 1979? 1978?) was that there was no such 
thing as a syntax error. Everything you expressed meant *something*. 
I couldn't wait until the next Wednesday when we moved on to yet 
another programming language in the course overviewing programming languages.

Yuck!

At 11/12/2024 12:13 +0000, Michael Kay michaelkay90@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> First one I came across, back in the early 70s, was SNOBOL - but I 
> never used it in anger.
>
> There was a system that was popular in the 70s in the UK called 
> FILETAB - the basic idea being "decision tables", where you write a 
> spreadsheet with conditions on one axis and actions on the other. I 
> discovered a few years ago that there was a company with a large 
> share of the market for doing comparative auto insurance quotes in 
> the UK whose core engine was all written as an enormous set of 
> FILETAB rules. They were running it on an emulated PDP-11 because 
> that's what it originally ran on in the days when the customers were 
> insurance brokers rather than the online public, and they couldn't 
> find any other technology to replace it that would deliver the 
> required throughput. (I got involved because they were -- and 
> probably still are -- using XSLT extensively for data conversions to 
> get the data feeds from the insurance companies into their core engine).
>
> Michael Kay
>
> > On 11 Dec 2024, at 10:58, Roger L Costello costello@xxxxxxxxx 
> <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Folks,
> >
> > I love programming languages that offer this style of 
> programming: "if the input matches this pattern, then do that 
> action." That is, I love pattern-action languages.
> >
> > XSLT is a pattern-action language. So is AWK.
> >
> > What other languages are pattern-action?
> >
> > /Roger
> >
> >


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