Re: Repetition syntax

Hello again,

I thought I’d see if I could summarize the proposals that I’ve seen so far on this thread. Here’s my list (I’ve used 3 and 5 as stand-ins for any arbitrary number):

|---+-------------+-----------------+----------------------|
| 0 | a, b*, c    | a, b*, c,       | a, b ** ",", c       |
|---+-------------+-----------------+----------------------|
| 1 | a, b<3>, c  | a, b<3,5>, c    | a, b <<3,5>> ",", c  |
| 2 | a, b#3,c    | a, b#3,5, c     | a, b ##3,5 ",", c    |
| 3 | a, b&(3), c | a, b&(3,5), c   | a, b &&(3,5) ",", c  |
| 4 | a, b 3 *, c | a, b 3 * 5, c   | a, b 3 ** 5 ",", c   |
| 5 | a, b x 3, c | a, b x (3,5), c | a, b xx (3,5) ",", c |
|---+-------------+-----------------+----------------------|

Row 0 is just the ordinary “*” operator for comparsion.

I think the proposals in rows 2 and 3 could work with most non-name punctuation characters. (Consequently, I haven’t repeated them for “@”, for example, or “%”.)

I think the proposals in rows 2 and 3 could also work with either “:” or “..” or any of a variety of other separators between the numbers in place of “,”. Again, I haven’t expanded the table. I think we can make the choices serially.

I think the proposals in rows 4 and 5 are impractical. I think they’re too confusing for users and they’re also too confusing for the grammar. Using a delimiter that might be a name character would be much harder to make work unambiguously in the iXML grammar for iXML.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

--
Norm Tovey-Walsh
Saxonica

Received on Wednesday, 3 December 2025 16:08:13 UTC