Thanks BitOBear, you're right, I missed a case, use of numeric values stored in
other representations and used as symbols, not only when stored as
strings.
However, I did give the key defining property that holds in all
cases whenever a numeric value is used as a symbol, namely that the value
of the symbol cannot be determined from inspection of the symbol alone.
Consequently the fact that the symbol is numeric has no numeric significance
and only serves to make it distinct.
Let me try to extend that second
paragraph of the definition a bit to accommodate the missing
case:
If a symbol is represented by a string which
contains numeric octets but chooses not to employ any collating sequence
information to given the string numeric meaning, or if a symbol is represented
by a string which contains non-numeric octets and it is not possible to directly
decode this string into a single native numeric value without involving
additional information, or if the symbol employs any other representation from
which the value of the symbol is not determinable by decoding the bits in the
representation, then the symbol CANNOT BE a numeric reference because it has no
built-in predefined value. Such a symbol can only be assigned a value by symbol
resolution, a process which can assign to it ANY value whatsoever, because the
bits in the symbol representation do not intrinsically encode that
value.
More of a mouthful, but more accurate and
complete. Thanks. :-)
Pity that the Oracle team doesn't give a damn about
accuracy and completeness. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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