[Bug 2725] Incorrect example in section 5.2.1

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=2725

           Summary: Incorrect example in section 5.2.1
           Product: XPath / XQuery / XSLT
           Version: Working drafts
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Windows XP
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: Functions and Operators
        AssignedTo: ashok.malhotra@oracle.com
        ReportedBy: lholst@students.cs.uu.nl
         QAContact: public-qt-comments@w3.org


Hi,

In section 5.2.1 of the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators
specification [1], it says:

> fn:dateTime(xs:date("1999-12-31"), xs:time("24:00:00")) returns
> xs:dateTime("1999-12-31T00:00:00") because "24:00:00" is an alternate lexical
> form for "00:00:00".

However, to my understanding the ISO 8601 standard says that 00:00 is the
beginning of a day, and 24:00 is the end of a day, quote [2]:

> As every day both starts and ends with midnight, the two notations 00:00 and
> 24:00 are available to distinguish the two midnights that can be associated
> with one date. This means that the following two notations refer to exactly
> the same point in time:
> 
>     1995-02-04 24:00 = 1995-02-05 00:00

That is, xs:time should not lose information that is explicitly specified in the
string it is being constructed from (being "24:00:00" instead of "00:00:00"). It
should be stored internally as 24:00:00, and if it is combined with a date
should either return "1999-12-31T24:00:00" or "2000-01-01T00:00:00".

So, I would suggest the example in the specification to be changed to something
like this:

fn:dateTime(xs:date("1999-12-31"), xs:time("24:00:00")) returns
xs:dateTime("2000-01-01T00:00:00") because "24:00:00" is an alternate lexical
form for "00:00:00" on the next day.


~Grauw

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions/#func-dateTime-examples
[2] http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

Received on Wednesday, 18 January 2006 15:35:42 UTC