- From: LeVan,Ralph <levan@oclc.org>
- Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 09:47:10 -0500
- To: "ZIG Mailing List (E-mail)" <www-zig@w3.org>
The ZIG has added a type 104 truncation attribute that reflects the semantics from the Z39.50 CCL query. We have used that syntax internally at OCLC for many years now and have a problem with the syntax for the '?' character. As defined in the standard, the syntax for '?' is: The character '?' (question mark) is used to mask a variable number of characters. It may be followed by a positive integer, i.e. one or more consecutive decimal digits (where the first is positive) in which the positive integer represented by the string of digits (beginning with the digit immediately following the '?', up to and not including the first non-digit character), indicates a range of characters to mask, from zero up to and including the specified integer. The problem arises when a '?' is embedded inside a numeric term. There is no way to tell what digits relate to the '?' and what digits are part of the term. I would like to propose that the syntax be changed to support only a single digit following the '?'. In those infrequent cases where more than nine positions of masking are needed, multiple '?' characters can be provided. (e.g. ?10 can be represented as ?9?1.) This greatly reduces the potential for error in this otherwise abmiguous situation. Thanks! Ralph
Received on Thursday, 28 March 2002 09:48:35 UTC