Lambda the Ultimate

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.