[dsdl-discuss] Re: Wildcard in DSDL Part 4

On Mon, 5 Apr 2004 07:34:14 +0100
"Martin Bryan" <martin@is-thought.co.uk> wrote:

>
> > I do not remember the semantics of namespace wildcards.
> > Consider <namespace ns="a*b*" wildCard="*">...</namespace>
> >
> > Suppose that we have two namespace URIs: "ab" and "ab*". Do they
> > match the above namespace element?
>
> To my understanding they do. * normally equates to zero of more.

One could argue that only the first occurrence of the wildcard character
is a wildcard and the other occurrences are not. But I am happy to say
all occurrences are wildcards.

>But should
> we allow users to specify their own wildCard or should we prespecify it?
> Will we allow ? in a?b* and will this mean that a is optional or that a
> single charcacter may occur between a and b? My personal preference is that
> we adopt conventions of an existing language (e.g. Perl as used by W3C) for
> wildCard specification.

This issue is complicated since namespace URIs can contain "*". If we always use
"*" as a wildcard, we cannot specify a URI containing "*". James suggested several
possible solutions in the previous meeting, and he finally concluded that the
introduction of the attribute "wildCard" is the best.

Cheers,

-- 
MURATA Makoto <murata@hokkaido.email.ne.jp>
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