Pattern Matching and Transform Rules

In his very informative and extensive book The Mathematica GuideBook for
Programming Michael Trott makes the following claim: "No other available
programming system comes close to Mathematica's ability to match patterns
in arbitrary structures (expressions)."

How valid is his contention? I find such general and absolute statements to
be hazardous in so much as he may be unaware of systems which can support
similar functionality. Not that I would hold it up as an example of
programmatic eloquence, but XSLT seems to provide a considerable amount of
this kind of functionality.

I'm curious to know what others think about Mathematica's capabilities in
the area of pattern matching in arbitrary structures. Opinions?
--
Nil conscire sibi
.

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