Proposed extensions to unary and binary lookup expressions

[michaelhkay]

Allows certain common constructs (string literals and variable
references) to appear on the RHS of the lookup operator "?" without
parentheses

[ChristianGruen]

A clear +1 from my side!

We noticed as well that it can be painful to explain the difference between $array?($i) and $array($i) even to advanced XQuery users. Code will be better readable if there will be more cases in which the parentheses can be avoided.

[adamretter]

+1 from me too.

Looks good.

Unless I see any objections within a month, I think we can safely merge this. People can always file issues later, after all, these are only proposals at this stage.

@rhdunn Any comments?

[rhdunn]

+1 from me as well

No comments at this stage.

[rhdunn]

Should this also add QName and URIQualifiedName to the list of unparenthesized items? This way, NCName can be replaced by EQName. This would allow:

$map?point:x
$map?Q{}x

[michaelhkay]

The main purpose of the lookup construct is for easy addressing into JSON structures, and QName-valued keys don't arise in JSON, so I think not.