- From: Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 22:56:48 -0400
- To: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>
- Cc: Yosi Scharf <syosi@mit.edu>, public-cwm-talk@w3.org
>
> How about adding at least one comma to a list syntax to give set
> syntax, so that the same punctuation is used for lists. The comma
> could be thought of as adding unorderedness. (The other use of a comma
> occurs in RDF statements with multiple objects - and the objects are of
> course nor ordered)
>
> (,) The null set
> ( :a ,) The set with only :a in it
> ( :a, :b, :c) The set with :a , :b and :c in it
That's rather elegant. I'd suggest a semicolon intead of a comma,
though, since so many list syntaxes (everything I can think of other
than LISP and n3) use commas. Another option is "|". The mnemonic
for me comes mostly from semi-colon being Prolog's "or", and a set is
kind of vaguely a little like an alternation. :-)
What's the current n3 meaning of { <a>, <b> }? Is that something
really useful? I like { } for sets (since that's what I learn in my
math classes) and formulas are very similar to sets of triples.
-- sandro
Received on Monday, 2 August 2004 22:55:00 UTC