Re: Problems with xml-parse-string

[David Kastrup]

David De La Harpe Golden <address@hidden> writes:

> On 24/09/10 02:09, Chong Yidong wrote:
>> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen<address@hidden>  writes:
>>
>>> Stefan Monnier<address@hidden>  writes:
>>>
>>>>> As for the :foo node names, we can map them to anything else if
>>>>> required.  Pick an invalid XML character -- any one will do, if this is
>>>>> important.
>>>>
>>>> How 'bout =foo ?
>>>
>>> Looks good to me.
>>
>> If we're going to make a clean break with the old xml.el parse tree
>> format, I think it makes more sense to go with sxml.  Is there any
>> technical reason not to?
>
> I'm not too convinced mapping xml element and attribute names to
> interned lisp symbols at all is particularly desirable.  Not that I
> personally use xml-... in emacs lisp much/ever, but I have used common
> lisp xml parsing in the past and seem to remember that using strings
> was overall less problematic than symbols (and it wasn't just down to
> case - 
> common lisp only looks case insensitive), just generally easier to be
> non-lossy and non-cluttering-symbol-table-with-random-xml-crap. Read
> some transient xml message once? have some useless symbols hanging
> round forever (for small values of forever).

You can scan through interned symbols (or uninterned ones) much faster
than through strings because they compare EQ.

-- 
David Kastrup