Re: [XQuery] semicolon separator after declarations

Xavier Franc wrote:

> 
> 
> as a follow-up of discussion on www-ql@w3.org 
> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ql/>
> about syntax issues:
>    http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ql/2004AprJun/0029.html
>   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ql/2004AprJun/0025.html
> 
> I suggest, if it is not too late, the following change:
> 
> -  make optional the separator ';' between prolog declarations.
> 
> (unless this creates a real lexical issue but it doesn't seem to
> be the case.)
> 
> Though the semicolon can improve readability in some
> cases,  it is both heavy, ugly and unnecessary
> after functions or variable initializations.

To me, making them optional is the worst possible approach - XQuery 
processors would still need to be able to parse the language with or 
without the semicolons. If we were to do that, it would be better to 
simply remove the semicolons so everybody writes queries with the same 
syntax.

But the semicolons do make error reporting easier, and simplify parsing 
of the language. More importantly, they also make it more likely that 
future versions of XQuery will have the flexibility they need to extend 
the language.

Jonathan