ORA-XQ-136-C: No need to permit whitespace between "$" and variable name

SECTION A.1: EBNF

It seems that whitespace is permitted between a dollar sign and
a QName, for example "for $ (: hello world :) prefix:localname"
seemingly is permitted, since rule [43] ForClause is not
tagged with /* ws: explicit */.  However, I have not observed a
single instance in the examples of whitespace between a dollar
sign and a variable name.  Regarding the dollar sign as an 
operator rather than the first character of a variable name 
seems to fly in the face of the inevitable user perception that
$i is a variable name (rather than $ is an operator and i is the 
variable name).  It might be more intuitive to change rule [20]
to 

  Varname ::= '$' QName /* ws: explicit */

and eliminate all the places where '$' appears as an operator
sign.

- Steve B.

Received on Monday, 16 February 2004 16:23:01 UTC