- From: Thomas Passin <tpassin@tompassin.net>
- Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2020 22:24:46 -0400
- To: Patrick J Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Cc: Semantic Web <semantic-web@w3.org>
On 7/8/2020 9:23 PM, Patrick J Hayes wrote: >>On Jul 8, 2020, at 4:15 PM, Thomas Passin <tpassin@tompassin.net> wrote: >> Not exactly, but I'm saying it's not usually of much importance to say >> that the two literals are "the same" or not. They aren't identifying >> anything > > They most certainly are. They are the only things in RDF which have a > unique, fixed meaning. “17”^^xsd:integer /always/ refers to – > identifies, denotes, names, has as value – the number seventeen. Yes, I agree and I didn't mean that a literal string does not denote its literal, so my language was too imprecise. I meant that assigning the value of a literal to a node can rarely identify that node. >> , and very few literals except for URIs used as unique identifiers can >> do so. It's really in the same league as whether the integer "2" in a >> given programming language is implemented as a singleton object or not >> (I understand that it is in Python). It's much like an implementation >> detail. > > There isn’t anything like ‘being implemented’ in RDF. The RDF literal > does not get ‘implemented’ as some binary construct in memory. It is > simply a /name/ for the /number/ (or string, or date, or whatever the > datatye says it refers to). There isn’t any underlying implementation > for RDF to compile into, no virtual machine for it to run on. So… Yes, of course, and again, I didn't mean to imply that it does. Really, all I'm getting at is that there isn't much going on - RDF-wise - with a literal value *other than* its value. The words about singletons in a programming language were just to bring in a bit of connection to a previous poster who tried to cram programming structures into the RDF discussion. I am sorry to have muddled things by insufficiently careful language. TomP
Received on Thursday, 9 July 2020 02:25:03 UTC