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Re: Inquiring mind has a question

To: stiller@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Inquiring mind has a question
From: Paul Strauss <pss@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 10:15:55 -0800
Cc: info-inventor@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sender: owner-inventor@xxxxxxxxxxx
Matthias Stiller wrote:

> I wonder why there are some restrictions in setting node names. For example
> Node names beginning with numbers are not allowed and will get changed, e.g.
> 
> 4superbname will be changed to _4superbname.
> 
> Furthermore characters like . and others are not allowed. Is there a special
> reason for this behaviour ?

The restriction about not starting with a number is pretty standard
for identifiers, isn't it?

Any parsed language has to restrict its lexical tokens in some way. In
the case of DEF names in Inventor, the following characters are
meaningful to the parser and are not allowed:

        . + ' " \ { }

For example, this is legal syntax for connecting a field from an
engine output:

        translation = USE MyEngine.output

If the name could contain a '.' , this would require lookahead to
resolve. It's generally better to make some restrictions to keep the
parser simple.

----
Paul S. Strauss           pss@xxxxxxxxx        Pixar

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