FW: Regex syntax [+-]

A couple of weeks ago I raised this message on the list, and received no
reply.

Does this mean:

(a) that it will eventually be answered, and in the meantime I can enjoy
listening to piped Vivaldi, or

(b) that it's fallen down a black hole?

Michael Kay



-----Original Message-----
From: xmlschema-dev-request@w3.org [mailto:xmlschema-dev-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Michael Kay
Sent: 04 August 2005 22:51
To: xmlschema-dev@w3.org
Subject: Regex syntax [+-]


I'm busy trying to implement the anti-erratum that says [+-] in a regex is
now legal, and I'm therefore trying to understand exactly what the rules now
are.

In particular, what characters are allowed to appear as s and e in a range
[s-e]?

The production rules say

[18]   	seRange	   ::=   	charOrEsc '-' charOrEsc
[20]   	charOrEsc	   ::=   	XmlChar | SingleCharEsc
[21]   	XmlChar	   ::=   	[^\#x2D#x5B#x5D]

which imply that [, ], \, and - are disallowed in both positions.

But the text then elaborates this by saying that 

s-e is a valid character range iff:

    * s is a .single character escape., or an XML character;
    * s is not \
    * If s is the first character in a .character class expression., then s
is not ^
    * e is a .single character escape., or an XML character;
    * e is not \ or [; and
    * The code point of e is greater than or equal to the code point of s; 

Question: in this English text, what does "XML character" mean? Does it mean
any character allowed in XML, or does it mean XmlChar as defined in
production 21? (If it means XMLChar, why are bullets 2 and 5 there?)

The grammar rules say that \ and [ are disallowed in both positions, but the
English rules say \ is disallowed for the start of the range while both \
and [ are disallowed for the end. Why the inconsistency? Why is "-" not
mentioned?

I'm left more confused than ever!

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/