Re: N3 and Turtle Syntax Questions

Hi,
Sandro has asked on the SemWeb list if there are any comments on Turtle syntax.
I raised an issue (forwarded below) a few years ago, but it looks to me like the syntax is still the same.

I would like the syntax to allow comma and semicolon as a terminator (and thus also to be compatible with N3).

Hopefully the message is still sufficiently explanatory, but please ask if you need elaboration.
Best
Hugh

On 10 Jan 2008, at 02:25, Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org> wrote:

> Oh, I completely understand why -- that's indeed why N3 has it.
> (I have sed files for generating N3 -- very practical. Don't tell anyone.)
> Mind you, I have always been generating pred-object pairs,
> so I have used the ability to end in a semicolon, not a comma.
> 
> Tim
> 
> PS: IIRC  Pascal and Algol has the same problem. See e.g.http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html "Pascal, in common with most other Algol-inspired languages, uses the semicolon as a statement separator rather than a terminator". Just because I shave it off doesn't mean it ain't grey ;-)  Ee bah gum, when I were a lad, were would be lucky to even *have* semicolons, ... ;-)
> 
> On 2008-01 -09, at 14:33, Hugh Glaser wrote:
> 
>> 
>> This was going to be a quick confirmation on N3 and turtle syntax for ';'
>> and ',', but seems to have got a bit complicated.
>> 
>> I want to write
>> 
>> @prefix owl:  <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
>> <http://southampton.rkbexplorer.com/id/person-00021>
>> owl:sameAs <http://citeseer.rkbexplorer.com/id/resource-CSP109020> ;
>> owl:sameAs 
>> <http://dblp.rkbexplorer.com/id/people-1726e6ee8fb20c8704f47285949b39b3-d101
>> 32da488b7179a8b1844f88470032> ;
>> .
>> 
>> Similarily:
>> @prefix owl:  <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
>> <http://southampton.rkbexplorer.com/id/person-00021> owl:sameAs
>> <http://citeseer.rkbexplorer.com/id/resource-CSP109020> ,
>> <http://dblp.rkbexplorer.com/id/people-1726e6ee8fb20c8704f47285949b39b3-d101
>> 32da488b7179a8b1844f88470032> ,
>> .
>> 
>> That is:
>> <#pat> <#age> 24;  <#eyecolor> "blue"; .
>> and
>> <#pat> <#child> [ <#age> 4 ], [ <#age> 3 ], .
>> 
>> Looking at the syntagmata in (1) and (2), my reading is that I can do this
>> for ';', although they have different structures:
>> N3 seems to do it by the possibility of () for propertylist.
>> Turtle seems to have an explicit optional ';' (in rule 7).
>> 
>> On the other hand, for ',':
>> N3 seems to do it by the possibility of () for objecttail.
>> However, I don't think I can do the same in turtle, as rule 8 in (2) lacks
>> the extra (',')?
>> 
>> (I would have downloaded the yacc grammar for N3 and tried it for real, but
>> the link on (3) to the yacc grammar gives 404, by the way.)
>> 
>> So the question is: have I got something wrong?
>> If not, then to use the second, ',', construct, I need to use N3, not
>> turtle.
>> So some questions are:
>> Is this what is intended, rather than an omission?
>> If so, why?
>> It seems a bit strange that such simple N3 is not compatible with turtle.
>> 
>> (1) http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/grammar/n3.n3
>> (2) http://www.dajobe.org/2004/01/turtle/#sec-tutorial
>> (3) http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Notation3.html
>> 
>> PS
>> And if you want to know why, it is because I want to generate a load of
>> sameAs triples. It is a common problem for program (and other) generators
>> not to want to know you are generating the last item in a list, and simply
>> treat the ';' or ',' as terminator, rather than separator. This can be
>> achieved by allowing null productions (as N3 above), or an explicit optional
>> (as turtle ';'), or by actually making it a terminator, although then you
>> tend to end up with ';;;' in the code.
>> And you can't put it at the front of each output either, otherwise you need
>> to treat the first item in the list specially.
>> (For the grey beards among us, this is why generating something like Algol68
>> was more of a pain than generating Pascal!)
>> 
>> Best
>> Hugh
>> -- 
>> Hugh Glaser,  Reader
>>               Dependable Systems & Software Engineering
>>               School of Electronics and Computer Science,
>>               University of Southampton,
>>               Southampton SO17 1BJ
>> Work: +44 (0)23 8059 3670, Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 3045
>> Mobile: +44 (0)78 9422 3822, Home: +44 (0)23 8061 5652
>> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~hg/
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 

--
Hugh Glaser
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Received on Monday, 10 September 2012 17:00:21 UTC