Chapter 17. XSLT

Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) is provably Turing complete. That is, given enough memory, an XSLT stylesheet can perform any calculation a program written in any other language can perform. Note, however, that XSLT is not designed as a general-purpose programming language, and attempting to use it as one inevitably causes pain (especially if you're accustomed to procedural languages like Java instead of functional languages like Scheme). Instead, XSLT is designed as a templating language. Used in this manner, it is extremely flexible, powerful, and easy to use. But you do have to recognize what it is and is not good for. You could calculate Fibonacci numbers in XSLT, but Java will do a much better job of ...

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