Re: UNSAID - two test cases (dawg:unbound, issues#useMentionOp)

On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 05:26:01PM +0000, Andy Seaborne wrote:
> >Yes, but SQL for eg. has tri-value logic (true, false and NULL), so you
> >can meaningfully apply operators and functions to unbound values (NULL).
> 
> It doesn't quite work out that simply.  It's fine for operators and 
> functions but pattern matching isn't so straight forward.
> 
> OPTIONAL (<x> ?p ?o)
>  (?o ?q <y>)
> 
> so ?o may be NULL then we have the (?o ?q <y>) and it needs to handle
> ?o = NULL differently.  NULL is different.

Yes, bun in RDF you cant have a triple like (NULL ?q <y>), so that match
will always fail. Unless I'm missing something.
 
> Talking about NULLs, with all it special cases for matching and function 
> handling, like NULL != NULL, is no different to talking about unbound 
> variables.  Both need special handling.

There are no special cases. Any arithemtic operation involving NULL is
NULL, so NULL == NULL is NULL, NULL > 3 is NULL, ...
 
> >I have said a few times that DAWG I think should come down off the fence
> >about tri-value logic. 
> 
> Do you have a test case where it makes a difference?  I have difficulty 
> seeing this as other than a difference of linguistic approach, trying to 
> use the same language for matching and for operators.

Yes,

	SELECT ?foo
	WHERE [ (?foo :p ?x) ] [ (?foo :q ?y) ]
	AND ?x != ?y

In a tri-value logic, this will only succeeed if ?x and ?y are bound, I
think.

> It seems to me that we have to say what happens with op:numeric-less-than 
> encounters anything unexpected through the casting rules of F&O extended 
> for bNodes anyway.

Yes, but what. The Perl/PHP/ECMAScript convention is that 

	?x is unbound, ?y = 3

	?x != ?y is true
	?x > 3 is false (for various reasons)
	
In SQL they are both NULL, again, I think, My SQL is rusty. e.g:

	$y = 3;
	if ($x != $y) { print "true\n"; } else { print "false\n"; }
	if ($x > 3) { print "true\n"; } else { print "false\n"; }

prints

	true
	false

In PHP and Perl.

In Perl $x > -1 is true (unbound = 0, I guess), in PHP its false.

- Steve

Received on Wednesday, 22 December 2004 18:22:52 UTC