XQuery from the Experts: A Guide to the W3C XML Query Language

Literals and Comments

XQuery uses “smiley faces” to begin and end comments. This cheerful notation was originally suggested by Jeni Tennison. Here is an example of a comment:

(: Thanks, Jeni! :)

Note that XQuery comments are comments found in a query. XML documents may also have comments, like the comment found in an earlier example:

<!— document order —>

XQuery comments do not create XML comments—XQuery has a constructor for this purpose, which is discussed later in the section on constructors.

XQuery supports three kinds of numeric literals. Any number may begin with an optional + or – sign. A number that has only digits is an integer, a number containing only digits and a single decimal point is a decimal, and any valid floating-point ...