RE: Comments on XPath 2.0 specification

> Message-ID: <DFF2AC9E3583D511A21F0008C7E6210602679BAD@daemsg02.software-ag.de>
> From: "Kay, Michael" <Michael.Kay@softwareag.com>
> To: "'Mike Schilling'" <mschilling@edgility.com>, www-xpath-comments@w3.org
> Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 19:46:03 +0100
> Subject: RE: Comments on XPath 2.0 specification
> 

 
> It would be possible in principle to ensure that the XQuery grammar used a
> non-name (such as #define) in all contexts where such discrimination isn't
> possible, but the current sentiment in the Query WG is that escaping element
> names that clash with these names is preferable, because it means that
> escaping would rarely be necessary, while if "keywords" were escaped then it
> would always be necessary.
> 


Again, assuming XPath/XQuery are living languages which will add 
reserved words in later versions, it will never be clear which element 
names need to be escaped for expressions to continue to work.  One of 
the threads in Stroustrup's _Design and Evolution of C++_ is how 
difficult it was for him to introduce new keywords, for just this 
reason. SQL had similar issues.  Compare perl, which can add keywords 
freely, since they live in a different namespace from variables.

Received on Friday, 25 January 2002 14:29:47 UTC