Dynamic vs. indefinite extent

John Cowan cowan at locke.ccil.org
Tue Aug 11 23:23:28 BST 1998


james anderson asks about the extent of prefix bindings.

XML does not actually define the "extent" of anything.  An
XML processor must provide at least dynamic extent
(I think: it is possible that lexical extent is meant), but is
free to provide indefinite extent if that's useful to its
clients.  OTOH, the clients could provide the indefinite extent
themselves.  Nothing in XML or XML-namespace constrains an XML
processor either way.

(The point here, for those who don't follow this jargon, is that
"dynamic extent" objects don't last after the end of their scope,
like local variables in C, whereas "indefinite extent" objects
last until nobody wants them any more, like heap allocations in C.)

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan at ccil.org
	You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
	You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
		Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)




More information about the Xml-dev mailing list