- From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 18:05:56 -0400
- To: Yosi Scharf <syosi@mit.edu>
- Cc: public-cwm-talk@w3.org
How about adding at least one comma to a list syntax to give set
syntax, so that the same punctuation is used for lists. The comma
could be thought of as adding unorderedness. (The other use of a comma
occurs in RDF statements with multiple objects - and the objects are of
course nor ordered)
(,) The null set
( :a ,) The set with only :a in it
( :a, :b, :c) The set with :a , :b and :c in it
- Advantage is that lists and sets are similar and use up the same
delimiters.
You might think that the "," should add order (as in a python triple or
sequence) but in fact in most grammars order is normally important --
you can't just reorder the tokens -- so a special character to indicate
unorderedness makes more sense, one could argue.
Tim
On Aug 2, 2004, at 15:06, Yosi Scharf wrote:
> Recently, it was decided that Cwm should have support for sets.
>
> This leads to the question, what delimeter should a set have in n3?
> The problem is n3 already use every ascii delimeter I can think of.
> (...) is taken for lists
> {...} is taken for formulae
> [...] is taken for anonymous nodes
> <...> is taken for resources
>
> My father suggested «...», but being as that cannot be typed on a
> standard keyboard, is unlikely to be useful.
>
> My personal opinion is something like {|...|} would be best. Something
> like $(...) might also work. It seems no matter what we do,
> readability is compromised.
>
> Yosi
Received on Monday, 2 August 2004 18:06:37 UTC