Forbid zero-length identifiers. - Githubissues

kdl-org / kdl

the kdl document language specifications

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Forbid zero-length identifiers. #298

Closed Patitotective closed 1 year ago

Patitotective commented 1 year ago

Discussions

https://github.com/kdl-org/kdl/pull/286#issuecomment-1250559170 and https://github.com/kdl-org/kdl/discussions/177.

Changes

Removed tests that allowed empty strings as identifiers (blank_node_type.kdl, blank_arg_type.kdl, blanl_prop_type.kdl, empty_quoted_prop_key.kdl and empty_quoted_node_id.kdl).
Edited SPEC.md to be clear about not allowing zero-length identifiers.

Notes

Need to update grammar as well, not sure how to say more than 0 string characters (create another rule ?).
Why some tests use blank prefix while other empty?
In the SPEC.md, define rename Identifier to Bare-identifier and define Identifier as a Bare-identifier or quoted string (with more than 0 characters).

zkat commented 1 year ago

I'm strongly -1 with this change. Identifiers can be arbitrary keys in key/value pairs and this would present a potentially serious interop problem. For example, I'll note that JSON keys can be empty strings as well. This feels arbitrary and conflates the concept of None/null with "valid but empty value". I don't see a reason to do this.