SAMP MType parameters issue

Mike Fitzpatrick fitz at noao.edu
Mon Nov 10 08:21:48 PST 2008


> There are other languages (C) for which identifiers can only be of the form
>> you are expressing, and many languages with C runtimes share the same
>> restrictions.
>>
>> However, I would go for identifier as:
>>
>> identifier ::= (letter) (letter | digit | "_")*
>>
>>
The restriction is being proposed to facilitate a trick that can be used in
a specific language, NOT because it inherently adds anything to the
protocol itself -- I see it as similar to restricting the UCD syntax because
of how a VOTable app might be written.  We've separated the message
from the transport in SAMP, why are we tying content-syntax to the
implementation language?

FITS allows a hyphen and python can be used, UCD has a period and java
can be used....we're defining the message content, not the identifiers used
in the interface.  I don't think the BNF is too restrictive, I also don't
see any
reason why it should be restricted by the identifier syntax of *any*
language.

-Mike
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ivoa.cacr.caltech.edu/pipermail/apps-samp/attachments/20081110/cd256c96/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the apps-samp mailing list