[xsl] Re: Two "Philisophical" questions about the language

["Vladimir Nesterovsky" <vladimir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > 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.

I've just thought that by the same token there are dangling sequence items 
in:

for $item in $items return
 expr1, expr2

and in

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
)

Vladimir Nesterovsky
http://www.nesterovsky-bros.com/