[OASIS Issue Tracker] Commented: (OFFICE-2216) Clarify patterns(regular expressions and wildcards)

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    [ http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/OFFICE-2216?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=16685#action_16685 ] 

Dennis Hamilton commented on OFFICE-2216:
-----------------------------------------

In OpenFormula, there are functions and operations that accept comparison-string operands in various comparison and filtering operations.  A global setting determines whether or not the comparison-string operand is to be treated as containing wild cards or even be recognized as a regular expresion.

1. Wild-card interpretation is relatively straight-forward.  The characters "?" and "*" take special significance.  There is needs to be an explicit way to exclude those "?" and "*" occurrences that should be used as literals and not as wild-card indicators.  There appears to be no controversy in having a fixed, strict definition of this that applies for all comparison-strings that are interpreted to have wild cards.

2. The choice of regular expression notation is more complicated.   There is first the matter of choosing a regular-expression string syntax and semantics.  The regular expression process should handle Unicode in the manner specificed in particular guidelines established for parsing Unicode via regular expressions.  The regular expression syntax that shall be supported needs to be established rigorously.  Ideally, this same regularity can be introduced in ODF 1.2 Part 1 and in ODF Part 2 (OpenFormula) where regular-expression-based comparison/filter strings are provided for.

3. Along with (2) there are also some conformance issues around whether or not the regular-expression syntax and semantics are fixed or whether it is a base with additional features permitted.  If there are to be optional features and implementation-specific features allowed in conformant documents, we need to address what a conforming processor is permitted to do with that which it does not support or does not understand.   

This issue is about circumnavigating these concerns in an acceptable way.

> Clarify patterns (regular expressions and wildcards)
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: OFFICE-2216
>                 URL: http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/OFFICE-2216
>             Project: OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: Database, OpenFormula, Table
>    Affects Versions: ODF 1.2
>         Environment: This issue applies to OpenFormula, how open formula is profiled for ODF 1.2, and also how regular expression and wildcard patterns are used as features in OpenFormula and in unrelated parts of ODF 1.2 Part 1.
>            Reporter: David Wheeler 
>            Assignee: Dennis Hamilton
>             Fix For: ODF 1.2
>
>
> Clarify the specification of pattern processing (regular expressions and wildcards).
> Section 3.3 briefly notes wildcards; need to define more clearly.
> Need to clearly note that table:use-regular-expressions and table:use-wildcards are mutually exclusive (at most one can be true).
> Database criteria specification (section 4.9.8) needs to be clearer.
> Each function affected by patterns (other than the database functions which are governed by the database criteria text) need to be clearly identified as such.
> David A. Wheeler will help with this.

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