Tom (pattern matching language)
Encyclopedia
Tom is a programming language
particularly well-suited for programming various transformations on tree structures
and XML
based documents. Tom is a language extension which adds new matching primitives to C
and Java
as well as support for rewrite rules systems. The rules can be controlled using a strategy language.
Tom is good for:
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
particularly well-suited for programming various transformations on tree structures
Tree structure
A tree structure is a way of representing the hierarchical nature of a structure in a graphical form. It is named a "tree structure" because the classic representation resembles a tree, even though the chart is generally upside down compared to an actual tree, with the "root" at the top and the...
and XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
based documents. Tom is a language extension which adds new matching primitives to C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
and Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
as well as support for rewrite rules systems. The rules can be controlled using a strategy language.
Tom is good for:
- programming by pattern matchingPattern matchingIn computer science, pattern matching is the act of checking some sequence of tokens for the presence of the constituents of some pattern. In contrast to pattern recognition, the match usually has to be exact. The patterns generally have the form of either sequences or tree structures...
- developing compilers and DSL
- transforming XML documents
- implementing rule based systems
- describing algebraic transformations