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Opened: 2006-01-15 19:30 http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/CR-xpath-functions-20051103/ extends the semantics of the regular expressions defined in XML Schema 1.0 to allow for capture buffers; I would like to re-use regular expressions as de- fined in the candidate recommendation in a DTLL-like format, but an imporant requirement is automatic assignment of names for the captured substrings based on the index number of the parenthesized sub-expression as defined in the technical report. This is not feasible however with the current syntax as it does not allow non-capturing sub-expressions, so I would have to further extend the format which makes sharing of regular expressions and regex engines difficult. In fact, in order to re-use regular expressions as found on many web sites and programs, and as produced by many tools, one would first have to re-write them to fit into this model. I thus think the regular expression syntax should further be extended to allow for non-capturing sub-expressions using a syntax like (?:...) as is available in most other regular expression formats. regards, -- Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de Weinh. Str. 22 · Telefon: +49(0)621/4309674 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de 68309 Mannheim · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/
Thank you for your comment. The joint XSL and Query Working Groups agreed that yes, this could be useful, and it will be considered for a later version. We are not easily able to add new features at this stage. Liam (pp. XQuery + XSL Working Groups)
Is comment #1 supposed to formally address this issue? I never heard of this response and found it only by accident. Is there publicly archived evidence that the Working Groups actually sent the response to me? In that case I would appreciate a pointer so I can figure out what's wrong with my mail setup. The response is not acceptable to me, I did not ask whether the Working Group could easily make this change, but that it makes this change. As I pointed out, my implementation experience is that the current design is not suitable for a number of important use cases, and it is not clear to me that it would be reasonable to assume that making this change would invalidate an individuals review or implementation experience. Therefore, the Working Group would need to come up with a more technically sound response for me to withdraw the issue.
We normally work on the basis that if we add a comment to a bugzilla entry, Bugzilla automatically notifies the originator that the comment has been added. I think Liam might have been assuming you were more familiar with W3C processes than appears to be the case. During Candidate Recommendation phase, requests for new features and facilities stand almost no chance of acceptance in that round of the spec, unless you can demonstrate convincing evidence that the language is unusable or unimplementable without the change being made. Although your request is a perfectly reasonable suggestion for useful added functionality, it clearly doesn't fall into that category. Michael Kay (personal response)
(In reply to comment #2) > Is comment #1 supposed to formally address this issue? I never heard of this > response and found it only by accident. Is there publicly archived evidence > that the Working Groups actually sent the response to me? In that case I would > appreciate a pointer so I can figure out what's wrong with my mail setup. Apologies. This bugzilla entry was made on your behalf, but Ashok missed adding you to the cc list. I have done so, so you should be apprised of any further discussion of this issue.
The joint WGs discussed your request on the March 7 telcon. It was pointed out that you had not made this request on earlier versions of the documents. Also, it requests new functionality that is not germane to the languages we are standardizing. If you wish, we can consider the requested functionality for the next version of these languages. Please let us know if this is satisfactory.
Closing bug because commenter has not objected to the resolution posted and more than two weeks have passed.