[Bug 1278] [XQuery] Atomic Values to be returned in XPath steps

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=1278





------- Additional Comments From henryluo@vibrasoft.net  2005-04-29 07:14 -------
Michael Kay's comments which I think worth re-quoting here:

I personally wanted to use a different operator than "/" for mapping
sequences of atomic values, but now that we allow a sequence of atomic
values on the right of "/", I personally think it would make sense also to
allow a sequence of atomic values on the left. If we're going to allow
*/name() and */string-length() then we might as well also allow
*/name()/string-length(). The semantics are perfectly well-defined - it just
requires that (a) both operands must be homogenous sequences, and (b)
reordering and deduplication occurs only if the rh operand is a sequence of
nodes. It will allow some programming idioms which will look strange at
first, such as (1 to 5)/$x[.] to select the first 5 items in $x, but strange
programming idioms are nothing new in XPath.

I would suggest you raise this as a last-call comment on the spec. There
will probably be a reaction from the working group of "no new
functionality", but in my view there's a strong argument based on the fact
that it is simply removing a restriction from the language that can't be
justified. And it's not a new comment - there have been calls for a "simple
mapping operator" for years.

Received on Friday, 29 April 2005 07:14:11 UTC