Have You Abused XML Today?

The Common Business Communication Language (CBCL) is a proposal by John McCarthy that foreshadowed much of XML. The language consists of a basic framework of hierarchical markup derived from S-expressions, coupled with some general principles about use and extensibility. Although written in 1975, the proposal was not published until 1982, and to this day remains relatively obscure.

Here is a transaction in CBCL:

(REQUEST-QUOTE
(YOUR-STOCK-NUMBER A7305)
(UNITS 100)).

and in XML

<REQUEST-QUOTE>
<YOUR-STOCK-NUMBER> A7305 </YOUR-STOCK-NUMBER>
<UNITS> 100 </UNITS>
</REQUEST-QUOTE>

I do not see any benefit in the XML format, do you?