RE: document is not an element, is it?

>At 06:04 PM 3/9/2003 +0100, MW wrote:
>>Hi Jonathan!
>>
>>In the working draft "XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language" in chapter
"4.5 
>>Function Definitions" there is this example:
>>define function depth($e as element) as xs:integer
>>{
>>   {-- An empty element has depth 1 --}
>>   {-- Otherwise, add 1 to max depth of children --}
>>   if (empty($e/*)) then 1
>>   else max(for $c in $e/* return depth($c)) + 1
>>}
>>depth(document("partlist.xml"))
>>
>>But this function does not run in GALAX. And I think it is obvious
that 
>>the function must not work, because the funktion-parameter is declared

>>as  "element", but it is called with a parameter of type "document". I

>>think the declaration must be changed  from "element" to "item".

>Right, that's a bug in the spec.

Just to keep everything clear, and I cannot speak for GALAX, but isn't
'node*' the return type of the document() function, not the 'document'
type?  The 'document' type results from computed document constructors,
not calls to the document() function.

Furthermore, would it not be a static type error to rewrite the function
so that the argument type is 'item' rather than 'element', as was
suggested?  'node*' is not a subtype of 'item' (but 'item*' would be
valid, as would, of course, 'node*', which is what I would recommend for
the argument type).

	-Todd

Received on Monday, 10 March 2003 17:36:45 UTC