[xquery-talk] let's comment out a line in XQuery

[Michael Sokolov]

On 12/20/2012 11:00 AM, Michael Kay wrote:
>
> Note that you haven't actually commented anything out. When you change 
> the content of an element constructor from
>
> <a> <b/> <c/> </a>
>
> to
>
> <a> (:<b/>:) <c/> </a>
So to achieve the intended effect (no nodes where <b/> is, not even a 
comment node), one would need:

<a>{(:<b/>:)()}<c/></a>

?  That's a lot of punctuation.

I think this has been batted around here before, but would somebody mind 
refreshing us as to whether there is any good reason plain {} doesn't 
generate () (an empty sequence)?

-Mike