Re: Resiliency To New Data Requirements

Neo wrote:
>
> In dbd, an expression starts with a "(" and ends with a corresponding
> ")". Within the parentheses there can be 0 to many elements. Elements
> are separated by at least one white space. A white space is a space,
> tab, carriage return or line feed. The first and last elements can be
> adjacent to the parentheses. Elements are themselves expressions. An
> expression's first element is a function. The remaining elements are
> function inputs. An input is optional, if documentation shows it
> surrounded by square brackets. Once an optional input is omitted,
> remaining inputs cannot be specified. Functions that accept a variable
> number of inputs are indicated via three dots. The general format of an
> expression is:
>
> (function input1 input2 input3 ...)

This is actually a pretty good paragraph, in that it explains a lot and is quite clear. This is the sort of thing that I generally find missing from
your posts, and the lack generally makes it impossible for me to follow what you're trying to say. Often your posts are almost nothing but example dbd scripts with only the most vague description of what they're supposed to do, and there's no way for me to connect the dots.

But there's still a lot missing, specifically semantics. What exactly do new, select, create, update, delete do? (I think I've got 'and' figured
out, though.) What kind of scope do symbols have?

> The expression for the word john is (and (select word instance *)
> (select * symbolizedBy (select 'j 'o 'h 'n)). Its shorthand is either
> (word1st 'john) or (word+ 'john). In dbd, word refers to that which is
> spoken, not that which is written. Words are symbolized by a symbol or
> more typically a string of symbols. This allows a word to be symbolized
> in multiple languages and have multiple spellings.

I couldn't really follow this.  

Marshall Received on Fri Aug 04 2006 - 19:33:20 CEST