[Bug 4176] Syntax "do rename ... as ..." problematic with tokenization

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=4176





------- Comment #1 from mike@saxonica.com  2007-01-10 10:15 -------
If it's problematic for rename, then it's presumably problematic for insert
too?

My personal view on this is that I'm not at all comfortable with the
English-like or Cobol-like statement syntax when used in a language that's an
expression language rather than a statement language, and especially one that
has no reserved words. We changed the sequence type syntax for this reason from
"element x of type y" to element(x,y), and I think we would make life easier
for both implementors and users if we applied the same treatment to update
expressions. I can't see what's wrong with rename(x,y); or if there are
semantic reasons for not using a function call, then perhaps rename{x,y} or
rename{x}{y}. On the surface it looks more cryptic, but once you build compound
expressions with a lot of nesting it's far clearer.

Michael Kay

Received on Wednesday, 10 January 2007 10:15:13 UTC