[www-xpath-comments] <none>

I've not read the new XPath spec, but from Miloslav's summary of the
differences, it sounds like there are some more primitive operations
which I feel should be teased out and exposed to the programmer.  For
example

      integer arithmetic operators

      floating point arithmetic operators

      numeric comparisson

      lexicographic comparison with respect to a specified collating
      sequence

With the ground level operations exposed to the programmer, they can
be composed to best suit the needs of the application.  The "standard"
operations associated with the special prerfix and infox operators
should be specified in terms of these primitive operators, type-checks
and type conversions.

Also, I've occasionally noted in conversations with friends that I
felt that the XPath 1.0 grammer was too complicated.  It seems to me
that the notion of data type was folded into the grammar rather than
it being included in the specifications of each operator's semantics
as is the case in most language specs.  This is just an impression
thoough, I've not researchd this sufficiently to produce concrete
example though.

Received on Wednesday, 26 December 2001 12:51:51 UTC