array dimension zero?

 Hi all, 8-)
 Simon Fell has brought up a potential issue against the array 
serialization rules:

 The current rules don't allow zeros as sizes in arrays' 
dimensions.
 The most notable usecase for having a zero in there is an empty 
one-dimensional array, which can be easily represented by 
arraySize="*" or no arraySize attribute at all.
 Another usecase for having zeros in arraySize attribute would be
multidimensional arrays with some sizes really zero but I am not
at all sure that such a thing is really necessary and that the
zero is necessary on a position other than the first in arraySize
value, same as "*". What is an array with arraySize="2 0 3" ? It
can be argued mathematically that it's absolutely equivalent to
an empty one-dimensional array. On the other hand, I think some
programming languages can in fact convey multidimensional arrays
with some size being zero.

 Anyway, I think the real concrete question here is:
 Do we change positiveInteger to nonNegativeInteger in order to 
allow zeros as concrete sizes?

                   Jacek Kopecky

                   Senior Architect, Systinet (formerly Idoox)
                   http://www.systinet.com/

Received on Tuesday, 5 February 2002 05:11:28 UTC