Re: URI Templates: { ^ prefix ^ variable [] separator | default }

On 10/26/07, Marc Hadley <Marc.Hadley@sun.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 23, 2007, at 1:14 AM, Manger, James H wrote:
> >
> > The syntax is XML-friendly compared to Joe's. Joe's uses < > and &,
> > which require escaping in XML -- making templates more awkward to
> > read and write. < and > are already used as delimiters in HTTP
> > headers, particularly the proposed Link-Template header. There may
> > not be a clash if < and > only appear inside {…} within a template,
> > but it adds some confusion.
> >
> IMO, this is an important consideration. I think its highly likely
> that templates will be embedded in XML documents and having to escape/
> unescape delimiters in templates will be a pain.

This is a non issue.

Even if the <op>'s are changed to something more XML 'friendly'
you still have to escape because <arg> may contain & and ',
so you still have to escape. Also, let's look at the bigger picture:

  & and ' are legal characters in URIs, not even URI Templates,
     and are "problematic" for XML.
  ; is legal and sure to cause problems in SQL.
  { and } will cause issues with many templating engines.

This is why XML, SQL and templating engines have escaping rules.

   -joe

-- 
Joe Gregorio        http://bitworking.org