Re: Some comments re: the current Turtle working draft

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 12:29 PM, Mischa Tuffield <mischa.tuffield@garlik.com
> wrote:

> <snip/>
> 5. In Section 4.4 - Grammar: there is a distinct lack of whitespacing here,
> I am guessing this is based the current grammar is but a first pass. There
> is an email thread I started on this list which includes feedback from a
> Stefano D'Angelo (parser implementer), I think we should make sure we
> address the issues brought forward there [1].
>
>
There is a related note from Andy at [1].  Basically, whitespace and
comments are included in the PASSED TOKENS rule, which indicates that
whitespace and comments are allowed as tokens (a.k.a. terminals) anywhere in
the grammar but ignored.  This reflects the fact that many tools (javacc,
Antlr, etc) can skip whitespace tokens or emit them on a special hidden
channel.

Note that section 4.1 does talk some about whitespace.  Manually inserting
whitespace tokens everywhere they could possibly appear in the grammar would
be too difficult and would obscure the meaningful parts of the grammar.  So
we just say that it's allowed everywhere (outside of terminals) and only
required to disambiguate two terminals that would otherwise be interpreted
as one.

Note also that the SPARQL grammar [2] handles whitespace in a similar
fashion.

-Alex

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-wg/2011Mar/0297.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-query/#whitespace