Hi Jean-Marc,

It may be worthwhile to discuss this general XQuery feature request on talk@x-query.com or the W3 bug tracker [1].

Best, Christian

[1] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/

On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 11:05 AM, jean-marc Mercier jeanmarc.mercier@gmail.com wrote:

Hello,

I was wondering if it is possible to improve template programming and operator overloading with XQUERY 3.?

1. template programming : XQUERY provides a quite natural template mechanism

using type switch and instance:

declare function yell($animal) { if ($animal instance of element()) then

return typeswitch($animal) case element(cow) return "Moo" default return "..."

else "this is not an animal" };

However, I wonder whether it could be possible to provide such a mechanism directly at the interpreter level ? For instance, the following code seems coherent and concise :

declare function yell($animal as element(cow) ) {"Moo"} declare function yell($animal as element() ) {".."} declare function yell($animal ) {"This is not an animal"}

As far as I understand, XQUERY functions identification seems to be achieve through a couple (name, arity). Would it be difficult to extend it with (name,signature or predicate) ?

2. Operator overloading (quite linked to the previous question)

I don't know how to overload operators with XQUERY. For instance I would like to define something like

declare function array:operator+($left,$right){array:for-each-pair($left,$right,function($a + $b) { $a + $b } )}

Is it possible ?

I know that I can survive writing

declare function array:plus($left,$right){array:for-each-pair($left,$right,function($a + $b) { $a + $b } )}

but when one start to write algorithmic code, it is far easier and understandable to write $a+$b than array:plus($a,$b)