[Versa] Issue 3

[Michael Olson]

>> I guess I should have finished my thought.  Because of the above, then
>> it makes sense to have some syntactic sweetness (as long as it is not
>> molasses) for the first to cases (like we have).
>>
>> Maybe the answer is
>>
>> "statement(traversal expression)" and let the engine work this out....
>>
>> That would certainly let us stay at 1.0
>
> So it would then be
>
> object(statement(traversal expression)) etc.  ?
>


I misspoke here a little  I think traverse and filter would remain the  
same.  statement() would become a magic function as you pointed out  
below that can reconstruct the statement.  More likely the  
optimizer/query engine would flag the traverse/filter to return the  
entire statement.

Maybe the simpliest solution for 1.0 compliance is to modify the  
traverse and filter function calls.  An optional parameter that  
specifies result types.


Mike

> We could sneak around on this if we were desperate to keep it at 1.0,
> but I think it would be improper because it does change the semantics  
> of
> a traversal expression.  Right now A -> B -> C returns a list of
> objects, and if statement() has usual function call semantics, I don't
> know how it can reconstruct full statements from just each object.  If
> statement is more magic than a function, then we have changed the
> semantics of the <identifier> '(' <expr> ... ')' production.
>
> I think that technically either case still calls for a 2.0.  Or at  
> least
> a 1.5 ;-)
>
>
> --  
> Uche Ogbuji                               Fourthought, Inc.
> http://uche.ogbuji.net                    http://fourthought.com
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> Use CSS to display XML, part 2 -  
> http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/x-dw-x-xmlcss2-i.html
> XML Output with 4Suite & Amara -  
> http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/04/20/py-xml.html
> Use XSLT to prepare XML for import into OpenOffice Calc -  
> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-oocalc/
> Schema standardization for top-down semantic transparency -  
> http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think31.html
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
-----------------
Mike Olson                                                Principal  
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mike.olson at fourthought.com                +1 720 253 4662
Fourthought, Inc.                                       
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