Must the Literal in a Nodetest be an NCName?

• From: Kay Michael <Michael.Kay@icl.com>
• Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 15:47:59 -0000
• To: "'www-xpath-comments@w3.org'" <www-xpath-comments@w3.org>
• Message-ID: <FA209FE12D83D411BC970010A800133150828C@wwmess3.bra01.icl.co.uk>

In XPath section 2.3, is it an error if the literal is not a valid NCName?

For example, Saxon currently reports no error for

select="processing-instruction('*')"

Should it?

(It's not clear why the syntax uses a literal rather than an NCName here.
All other names to be matched are written as QNames rather than literals.
It's hard to believe that the syntax was deliberately designed to allow use
of non-name literals which will never match anything, but that seems to be
the strict reading of the current spec.)

Mike Kay

Received on Wednesday, 1 November 2000 10:47:40 UTC