[Bug 3224] Inequality

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=3224





------- Comment #2 from mike@saxonica.com  2006-05-09 19:17 -------
>> In the second paragraph of 2.2,
>I believe you mean 2.2.2.

All my numbering, I'm afraid, was based on section numbers in the "diff"
version of the document. It didn't occur to me that these might be different
from the "top copy".

>> what does the operator "<>" mean? (Not
>> equal? Not comparable?) Is it the same as the "/=" operator used in the
>> second paragraph of the subsequent Note?

>They are not quite the same, but in this case '<> NaN' should be replaced by
>'not equal to itself'.

The real point here is editorial, I think. The operators /= (not equal) and <>
(incomparable) are defined in 2.2.3, but used in 2.2.2 without explanation.

>In common usage, "unequal" means "not equal".  Do you really think this needs
>elaboration?

There are two possible meanings here: "comparable and not equal", or simply
"not equal". It's not obvious to me from the context which meaning is intended.
One can probably work out from the context which of these two meanings is
intended, but in a section where two different operators /= and <> are
introduced, it's scary to use a word "unequal" that isn't explicitly bound to
either of them.

Perhaps I'm conditioned by XPath 2.0, where A=B has three possible outcomes:
equal (true), not equal (false), and incomparable (error). But many of your
readers will also be conditioned by XPath.

Received on Tuesday, 9 May 2006 19:17:14 UTC