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Re: limits of the generic

• To: uche.ogbuji@f...
• Subject: Re: limits of the generic
• From: Jeni Tennison <jeni@j...>
• Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 16:31:03 +0100
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <E17wZET-0000FA-00@m...>
• Organization: Jeni Tennison Consulting Ltd
• References: <E17wZET-0000FA-00@m...>
• Reply-to: Jeni Tennison <jeni@j...>

Hi Uche,

>> Oh, I've just realised that I'm making the assumption that the
>> XPath 2.0 data model would be used for this -- that values would be
>> "labelled" with their type, such that when I pass around $num1 it
>> is a value labelled as being an xs:decimal rather than being
>> natively a string or a number and being converted to a particular
>> type when a particular function has to be carried out on it. Do you
>> think that's a bad idea?
>
> From an implementor's POV, it makes dealing with variables in XPath
> a royal pain. And Python is even more flexible in these matters than
> Java. I do think that certainly it is an idea that should give great
> pause, and my initial reaction is quite negative.

Would you mind taking some time to expand on this a bit more? Saying
that values are "a string with a data type as a label" is quite
fundamental in the current design of XPath 2.0, so if there are big
implementation problems with that, we need to address them. Plus, I'm
interested in pursuing this "fantasy XPath" idea, and again how values
are represented would have a major effect on whether the ideas we're
talking about in terms of data type libraries are at all realistic.

Thanks,

Jeni

---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/

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    • From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>

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    • From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>

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