Subject: [xsl] Re: Two "Philisophical" questions about the language From: "Vladimir Nesterovsky" <vladimir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:06:24 +0200 |
To those questions I would add another one: why "if" xpath 2.0 expression demands "else" part?
IfExpr ::= "if" "(" Expr ")" "then" ExprSingle "else" ExprSingle
The main reason was to avoid the infamous dangling-else ambiguity:
if (c) then if (d) then e else f
I personally would have preferred the solution of a closing token such as "end-if" or "fi".
I do remember a half-day spent on if/then/else, where it was clear that no-one much liked the status-quo syntax, but no-one could come up with improvements that had majority support.
for $item in $items return expr1, expr2
if (expr) then expr1 else expr1, expr2
I have found myself a couple of times troubled with such "for", and as result, deliberately taught myself to write braces:
for $item in $items return ( expr1, expr2 )
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