- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 21:14:47 -0800
- To: Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>
- Cc: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>, public-rdf-dawg-comments@w3.org
>On Sun, 2006-03-05 at 18:56 -0500, Elliotte Harold wrote: >> If there's a justification for using both $ and ? to represent >> variables, I haven't found it yet. > >The WG made that choice in the course of resolving the >punctuationSyntax issue. > http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/DataAccess/issues#punctuationSyntax > >A number of design considerations were laid out in: >Draft: open issues around '?' use. >http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg/2004OctDec/0160 > > >> I haven't finished reading the spec >> yet, so I could be missing it; but just looking at the BNF, I don't >> think there's any significant difference. > >Indeed, there is none. > >> If this is true, then I strongly urge the working group to pick one. >> personally I prefer the dollar sign. It's not a reserved character in >> URLs and it's already used to indicate variables in other languages such >> as PHP. However this isn't a strong preference. I could certainly live >> with a question mark. >> >> However I feel having too makes the language pointlessly complex, much >> harder to read, and harder to learn. It increases the size of the spec, >> increases the size and complexity of the grammar, and reserves an extra >> character that must now be avoided. Just a quick clarification: it does not reserve two characters, which is one of its strengths. If you have a variable name beginning with '?', then prefix it with '$', and vice versa. XML uses a similar trick with the single and double quote option, which allows quoted strings containing either single or double quote characters (but not both). Pat Hayes -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax FL 32502 (850)291 0667 cell phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
Received on Monday, 6 March 2006 05:15:08 UTC