Re: Comments on SPARQL from the XML Query and the XSL WGs (decimal syntax)

On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 08:28 -0700, Ashok Malhotra wrote:
> Notes on SPARQL Query Language for RDF
> Last Call Draft July 21, 2005  
[...]
> 7. Section 3.  Decimal values cannot be written as literals.  This seems like a
> needless limitation.  Suggest SPARQL use the literal definitions in XPath 2.0.

First, I'm not sure if you noticed the ^^ syntax:

[[
Examples of literal syntax in SPARQL include:

      * "chat"
      * "chat"@fr with language tag "fr"
      * "xyz"^^<http://example.org/ns/userDatatype>
      * "abc"^^myNS:myDataType
      * 1, which is the same as "1"^^xsd:integer
      * 1.0e6, which is the same as "1.0e6"^^xsd:double
      * true, which is the same as "true"^^xsd:boolean
      * false, which is the same as "false"^^xsd:boolean
]] --
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-rdf-sparql-query-20050721/#rdfliterals


I hope it's clear from there that decimal values can be
written as literals: "3.4"^^xsd:decimal .

If you're aware of that and you're asking that we change
SPARQL so that 3.4 is parsed as a decimal...

As of the July last call draft, SPARQL follows turtle, N3, python, Java,
javascript, php, C etc. in parsing that as a double.

In fact, XPath 1 does as well.
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xpath-19991116#numbers

I'm mildly surprised to learn that this has changed in XPath 2.0.
I expect you have documented the reasons for this change, but I'm
having trouble finding it.

I don't see it in

I Backwards Compatibility with XPath 1.0 (Non-Normative)
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xpath20-20050915/#id-backwards-compatibility

nor

J Revision Log (Non-Normative)
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xpath20-20050915/#id-revisions-log


Could you help me find rationale for the change in XPath?


-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E

Received on Friday, 14 October 2005 16:22:11 UTC