RE: questionable syntax choices

I can concede that points 2 and 3 are merely personal preference. However, I
think point 1 is more serious. I anticipate that a lot of time will be spent
by developers trying to determine why their XQuery didn't work, only to find
that they omitted a semi-colon. That's always been the case with C++.
 
Would it help if I beg? ;-)
Please get rid of semi-colons that aren't really needed by the parser!

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Rys [mailto:mrys@microsoft.com]
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 1:24 PM
To: Volkmann, Mark
Cc: public-qt-comments@w3.org
Subject: RE: questionable syntax choices



Thanks. While I somewhat agree with your points 1 and 2 (I would have
preferred {-- --}), I don't think one person's like or dislike of the
semantics is reason enough to change it given the potential disruption to
the general grammar.

 

Also, many modern languages use := for assignment since it is not the same
as the comparison =. And being able to express this semantics in a
non-context sensitive way seems better than the opposite.

 

Just speaking for myself....

Michael

 


  _____  


From: public-qt-comments-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-qt-comments-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Volkmann, Mark
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 5:28 AM
To: 'public-qt-comments@w3.org'
Subject: questionable syntax choices

 

I dove into learning about XQuery this weekend.  While I like what I see, I
think some questionable syntax choices have been made.  Here are three of
them.

1) Why is a semi-colon required at the end of a user-defined function
defintion?  It's clear that the end has been reached when '}' is
encountered.  I don't see how requiring a terminationg ';' makes parsing any
easier.  This is a known gotcha in C++.  I hate to see XQuery borrow a
syntax feature that is already a known issue.

2) Smilies are an odd choice for comment delimiters.  Why choose something
that isn't used by any other common programming languages?

3) Why use ':=' in let clauses instead of simply '='?  You know an
assignment is coming because of the presence of the keyword 'let'.  I don't
see how '=' could be confused for meaning something other than assignment.



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