[Developers] "Must ask for a value when you use a comparison operator"

[Tim Sturge]

I'm very happy with the mailing list right now. I'm already reading it, 
so there's one less thing for me to track if everything goes there.

Tim

William Pietri wrote:
> Tim Sturge wrote:
>   
>> Hi William,
>>
>> This is a very good question. The restriction is indeed artificial and 
>> I agree it would be good to remove it. If you're not interested in the 
>> value, there's no reason for MQL to require you to ask about it.
>>
>> It would be more difficult to return the value automatically. [...] 
>> asking for:
>>
>> [{ "/common/topic/alias~=": "Bradbury", "id": null, "type": 
>> "/film/film_location", "/common/topic/alias": null }]
>>
>> results in: [...]
>>
>> This is a case where inferring "/common/topic/alias": null from 
>> "/common/topic/alias~=": "Bradbury" would break the query, whereas if 
>> MQL does not return the value there is no problem to solve.
>>     
>
> Thanks, that's good to know.
>
> Personally I'd also prefer the leave-it-out approach, but if there are 
> strong partisans for the must-return-something approach, then you could 
> do something that parallels the behavior of
>
>     "*":null
>
> where "null" really means "null" or "[]" depending on context.
>
>
> Particular solution aside, do you want people to put MQL language 
> suggestions like this in with the tickets?
>
>     http://www.freebase.com/view/filter?id=/freebase/software_ticket
>
> Or is mentioning things here sufficient?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> William
>
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