[sc34wg3] TMQL - Short vs. formal syntax

[Lars Heuer]

Hi Inge,

> Oh, and one more thing, I believe that a programming language
> should use a word when one special character is not enough to
> describe an operator or whatever, some examples from the Path expressions:

> "<<" could be "LEFT", 
">>>" "RIGHT"

Please not. :)


> , "<~~" "REIFIED LEFT"
> , and "~~>" "REIFIED RIGHT"

> etc.

No! :)

We shouldn't try to reinvent Logo or Basic.

I think we don't want too much keywords in TMQL. The good thing in
TMQL as it is, is that it has *no reserved* keywords, that means that
you can use i.e. "select" or "for" as topic identifier as long as you
don't use it as start of a query expression. If we introduce more
keywords we have to check if this nice feature still works.

I agree that TMQL should be readable and not too hard to memorise, but
we shouldn't make TMQL too verbose. We already have verbose query
languages.

Best regards,
Lars
-- 
Semagia 
<http://www.semagia.com>