[SCL] ellipsis for seqvar notation

[Pat Hayes]

>Upon further reflection, I recommend seqvar be defined by
>  seqvar = {char} "..." {char}
>
>This allows "x1...xn" to be a seqvar, for example.

But this raises a different problem, which is that it *requires* for example

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&as_qdr=all&q=%22...%22&btnG=Google+Search

to be a seqvar: but this is a perfectly valid URI (its what your 
browser sends to Google if you ask Google to look for '...' ).

I want to try as far as possible to ensure that any URI can be used 
as a name in SCL. There are no URIs which start with '...', and its 
most unlikely that there ever will be,  but there can be URIs that 
contain that character sequence.

Pat

>Mark
>
>Mark Stickel wrote:
>
>>Pat Hayes also mentioned the possibility of "z..." instead of "...z".
>>Personally, I don't find one much more intuitive than the other,
>>but if some do, I don't see any reason in priniciple that seqvars
>>have to be marked by an initial "..." (or "@") versus a final one.
>>
>>Moreover, to accomodate all tastes, we could define seqvar by
>>  seqvar = {char} "..." | "..." {char};
>>or even
>>  seqvar = {char} "..." {char};
>>
>>Mark
>>
>>Pat Hayes wrote:
>>
>>>Comments requested on the following proposed change.
>>>
>>>Mark Stickel suggests that we adopt the ellipsis (three dots, ...) 
>>>as the distinctive prefix for a seqvar, rather than the @ symbol. 
>>>This is quite attractive, as it more directly conveys the sense of 
>>>'and so on' that is captured by the use of seqvars, and it frees 
>>>up a symbol which already has other uses in some contexts, most 
>>>notably in email address formats.  So
>>>
>>>(R x y @z)
>>>
>>>becomes
>>>
>>>(R x y ...z)
>>>
>>>Mark also suggests that the syntax be allowed to use just the 
>>>ellipsis as a seqvar, so that unless one uses two in a single 
>>>expression, there would be no need to decorate the ellipsis with 
>>>any further lexical stuff. The result is even more elegant:
>>>
>>>(R x y ...)
>>>
>>>Any objections?? If I don't hear any I will make this change to 
>>>the core syntax.
>>>
>>>Pat
>>>
>>
>>
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