On Tue, 2 Dec 1997, Dan Brickley wrote:
> The only alternatives to this approach I can think of are...
>
> 1. do a vast literature search on all possible formal schemes to find
> an unproblematic character for use in splitting. '|' might be a good
> bet.
>
> 2. establish a convention that all SCHEMEd text represented in DC must
> respect the special role of our chosen splitter character. This could
> force people to invent new physical encodings of schemes that clashed.
Or maybe a third:
3. establish a well known splitter character (say the comma) AND an escape
sequence (such as two adjacent commas) that represent that character
for real in the value. If you pick an obscure enough character for
most schemes, you'll rarely need to escape it and so this kludge
doesn't need to be exposed very often (but it is there to get you out
of sticky situations when necessary. A bit like a Twinky Bar that
you ignore 99.99999% of the time but might just eat after a
thermonuclear war.).
Tatty bye,
Jim'll
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon "Jim'll" Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Dept. Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND. LE11 3TU.
* I've found I now dream in Perl. More worryingly, I enjoy those dreams. *
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