[DFDL-WG] documentFinalTerminatorCanBeMissing (resending due to delivery problems)

[Steve Hanson]

I came across a format today which allows fields to be fixed length or 
delimited on a per element basis. The delimiter is allowed to vary on a 
per element basis. This indicates that the delimiter would be naturally 
modelled as a terminator in DFDL, as opposed to a separator.  However, the 
final terminator in the document must never appear. Not can be missing, 
but must be missing.  This suggests that 
dfdl:documentFinalTerminatorCanBeMissing is not flexible enough, and needs 
to apply on unparsing, and maybe needs to be a 3 way property...
- 'yes' -> can be omitted when parsing, output when unparsing 
- 'no' -> must be present when parsing, output when unparsing
-, 'always'. -> must not be present when parsing, must not be output when 
unparsing

Regards

Steve Hanson
Architect, Data Format Description Language (DFDL)
Co-Chair, OGF DFDL Working Group
IBM SWG, Hursley, UK
smh at uk.ibm.com
tel:+44-1962-815848





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