Re: Function naming: Problems and proposed solution

> 
> current-date().year() seems quite readable?
> 

Wow, "." as an operator. First thought was, it won't parse: "." is a valid character in names, so you wouldn't be able to write $my-date.date() without a space, and that feels to me like a show-stopper (especially as the diagnostics would be very obscure). Also there are just too many similar operators (=>, ?, !, /) and it's getting confusing. We would have used "." rather than "=>" in 3.1 if it weren't for the parsing difficulties.

Next thought is, what exactly are the semantics? How does it differ from "=>"? Perhaps the difference is about where we look for the function year()? The implication here, I think, is that we look in some set of type-specific functions ("methods", if you like) available for instances of xs:date. If we introduce a concept of type-specific functions like this, then I think we can use the existing operator (=>) without introducing the parsing complications of ".".

Michael Kay
Saxonica