`Value` in Table 13 is confusing

ietf-wg-jsonpath / draft-ietf-jsonpath-base

Development of a JSONPath internet draft

https://ietf-wg-jsonpath.github.io/draft-ietf-jsonpath-base/

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`Value` in Table 13 is confusing #366

Closed gregsdennis closed 1 year ago

gregsdennis commented 1 year ago

If I'm reading the table right, it looks like the term Value is being used to mean different things depending on which column it's in.

In column 1 ("Type") or column 3 ("Subtypes"), it's referring to the type system we're creating.
In column 2 ("Abstract Instances"), it's referring to the underlying JSON(ish) value kind, i.e. object, boolean, number, etc, plus Nothing.

I think having the same word to define these things can be confusing for the reader, and maybe we need something else in one of these places to indicate the distinction. We've already done this for the Absent type to distinguish it from the Nothing value.

glyn commented 1 year ago

I'm not sure there is a really good alternative. We could use JSONValue for abstract instances, but in the rest of the spec, "value" implies a JSON value, so this doesn't seem quite right.

gregsdennis commented 1 year ago

If "value" implies a JSON value (corresponding to the middle column), then we should change the others (the type name). It really is confusing.

gregsdennis commented 1 year ago

In the interim, we decided to append the type names with "Type". I will create a PR for this.

gregsdennis commented 1 year ago

I'm going to wait for #386 to complete before going forward with this as they change the same chunk of text.

glyn commented 1 year ago

I'm going to wait for #386 to complete before going forward with this as they change the same chunk of text.

Thanks. That's why I am trying to tidy up #386 and get it merged ASAP.