Re: variables prefix - ?variable vs. $variable

> sometime ago I arose a possible issue about the usage of '?variable'  
> style syntax vs. '$variable'  (i.e. clashing with SQL interface usage  
> of '?' for
> 'placeholders and bind values' )
>
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg/2004AprJun/ 
> 0797.html (see second part of the message)
>
> and I got a reply
>
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg/2004AprJun/ 
> 0802.html (see last part of the message)
>
> but I still do not see any mention about the issue/problem (or how it  
> could be solved/addressed) into the current BRQL draft
>
> http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/DataAccess/rq23/
>
> it seems Tucana iTQL uses '$' sign explicitly for variables - we do  
> similar escaping into our current RDQL implementation for *DBC  
> bindings
>
> what is other people feeling about this? any other implementation  
> experience?
>
> or any chance to get '$' symbol accepted as a synonym for '?' symbol  
> in the BRQL spec?

I'll admit to bias here... I think it's just familiarity, but I much  
prefer $ to ? for denoting variables, it seems easier to read to me. Of  
course, others will differ.

One thing we need to keep in mind is the characters we use, as people  
will end up using the language in far flung places. For example in iTQL  
we chose to use "<" and ">" to delimit URIs. This has caused us no end  
of heartache when dealing with JSP pages, XSL, or anything XML like  
that requires that these be escaped, or defined in CDATA sections.

Cheers,
Tom
-- 
Tom Adams                  | Tucana Technologies, Inc.
Support Engineer           |   Office: +1 703 871 5312
tom@tucanatech.com         |     Cell: +1 571 594 0847
http://www.tucanatech.com  |      Fax: +1 877 290 6687
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Received on Monday, 30 August 2004 21:32:28 UTC