RE: [search-ws] CQL discussion on SRU list

[Matthew Dovey <m.dovey@jisc.ac.uk>]

> 2.  title = (cat or dog)  is completely equivalent to title = cat or title = dog,
> which is a sane and easy way to express it, so why do we need these
> ridiculous histrionics.

This was the compelling reason (Occams Razor, KISS etc.). We were trying to limit unnecessary variants and only adding to the BNF structures which were essential to express new queries rather than adding new ways of expressing existing queries.

CQL is not really human readable

title = smith or jones

Although this has a single meaning according to the BNF, it is already ambiguous to the casual reader who might have meant it to be

title = "smith or jones"

or 

(title = smith)  or (any jones)

Add in Mike's variant and it could also have been intended to be

title = smith or title = jones

Moreover if we were to introduce short cuts of this nature, where would we stop. Do we also allow

author or title = smith

In Mathematical terms, Mike seems to be proposing to make the comparison operators distributive over the logical operators, I know of no formal logic which allows that (I suspect for very good reasons).

Matthew