[xquery-talk] VarRef

[Ronald Bourret]

In my case, the confusion comes from my first commercial programming job 
-- using BASIC on the PDP-11. For variable names, you were allowed a 
single letter, followed by an optional digit, followed by nothing 
(floating point), $ (string), or % (integer). No spaces were allowed 
between the variable name and the type identifier. Some things just stick...

-- Ron

Michael Kay wrote:
>>The April 2005 XQuery spec has:
>>
>>[84] 	VarRef 	   ::=    	"$" VarName
>>
>>This says that "$x" and "$   x" are equivalent VarRefs. Is 
>>this intentional?
> 
> Yes. The question keeps coming up. A lot of people think this rule is
> strange, and I've never understood why. Spaces are allowed in "@xyz" and in
> "true()" and "text()", so why shouldn't they be allowed in "$xyz"?