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Bug 24536 - Mixing of first and left/right hand operands terms
Summary: Mixing of first and left/right hand operands terms
Status: CLOSED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: XPath / XQuery / XSLT
Classification: Unclassified
Component: XSLT 3.0 (show other bugs)
Version: Last Call drafts
Hardware: PC Windows NT
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Michael Kay
QA Contact: Mailing list for public feedback on specs from XSL and XML Query WGs
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Reported: 2014-02-05 22:31 UTC by Abel Braaksma
Modified: 2014-02-24 15:00 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

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Description Abel Braaksma 2014-02-05 22:31:02 UTC
The terms first/second operand and left/right-hand operands makes it a bit unclear what is meant. This happens in at least two situations.

1.
19.8.7.5 Streamability of Simple Mapping Expressions (http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-30/#streamability-of-simple-mapping-expressions)

Here the text explains to rewrite the expression to make the mapping operator left-associative. Then the text mentions 

"The posture and sweep of the expression are the posture and sweep of the right-hand operand, assessed with a context posture and type set to the posture and type of the first operand."

The last term here, "the first operand" should apply to the left-hand operand of the binary left-associative operator, but when reading it I was stumped whether it applied to the actual first operand of the whole expression (a in a!b!c).

2.
19.8.7.6 Streamability of Path Expressions (http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-30/#streamability-of-path-expressions)

The same rewriting takes place here, making the path operator left-associative. Then, the text mentions:

"The posture of the expression is the posture of the right-hand operand, assessed with a context posture and type set to the posture and type of the first operand."

Again, the last term here is ambiguous for the same reasons as with the mapping operator. It's probably better to use right-hand and left-hand to make clear(er) what is meant.
Comment 1 C. M. Sperberg-McQueen 2014-02-12 10:06:36 UTC
The WG discussed this during the ftf meeting in Prague and agreed that this stylistic cleanup should be performed.
Comment 2 Michael Kay 2014-02-24 15:00:11 UTC
We now use "left-hand" and "right-hand" consistently.