[XML-SIG] Does 4XPath requires lex?

[uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com]

> Is it really the case that 4XPath requires lex code to be compiled? And
> if so, is that the case just because of the necessity to parse XPaths? I
> thought that someone had done a Python-based XPath parser before. This
> is a killer distribution issue, especially for Windows users. XPaths are
> probably not much harder to parse than regular expressions.

Actually, when we analyzed the performance of the first, all-Python versions 
of 4XSL, the pattern-parsing was by a huge margin the greatest bar on 
performance.  XPaths are not terribly complex, but they are just complex 
enough to make it difficult to do so efficiently with regular expressions.

Note that we shall be putting resources into compiling a version of 4Suite for 
Windows for distribution.  We expect to have it ready in January.

-- 
Uche Ogbuji
FourThought LLC, IT Consultants
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com	(970)481-0805
Software engineering, project management, Intranets and Extranets
http://FourThought.com		http://OpenTechnology.org