From: Ben Schumacher <ben@...>
Date: 2003-10-03T09:21:59+09:00
Subject: Re: xml + ruby = happy programmer

paul vudmaska said:
> I mean something like this...
>
> #(presuming %x creates an xml literal.)
> x = %x{<m><l>is your friend</l></m>}
>
> #access it like this...
> print x.m.l #>is your friend
>
> as opposed to
> x = {'m'=>{'l'=>'is your friend'}}
>
> print x['m']['l']#something like that.
>
> I'm not a ruby guru and might not even be that good a
> programmer but i like the first better. Much.

Sorry to focus on just this aspect of this post... this would never work.
How would I translate this element <element-name/> into this format?

## this
x = %x{<element-name>stuff</element-name>}
print x.element-name
## would evaluate to x.element (minus) name.

Unfortunately, the characters allow in element names don't allow this
"native" support. As a developer who uses XML daily, I find the current
interface extremely useful and powerful... especially with XPath. I don't
want to have to DOM grovel down two different elements, when I can just as
easily do: x['//i-need-this-one']

My 2c.

bs.