
Simple O ntologies in RDF and RDF Schema 39
in decimal notation. Accordingly, the lexical space consists of all character
strings that contain only numerals 0 to 9, at most one occurrence of ., and an
optional initial symbol + or -. The mapping between lexical space and value
space is the well-known interpretation of decimal numbers as rationals. The
literal strings 3.14, +03.14, and 3.14000, e.g., are multiple possible ways
to refer to the rational number 3.14. It is common in many datatypes that
a single value can be denoted in multiple different ways. Applications that
support a datatype thus recognize syntactically different RDF literals as being ...