[xsl] Why is RelationalExpr left associative?

[Oliver Becker <obecker at informatik dot hu-berlin dot de>]

Dear XPath experts,

can anyone give me the reason why the productions for EqualityExpr 
and RelationalExpr have been designed the way they are?
(See http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#NT-RelationalExpr )
The note in the specification about 3 > 2 > 1 talks about a possible 
misinterpretation.
So the question is: why are these kinds of expressions allowed? Are 
there any useful situations in which one can benefit?

I think formulating the production for RelationalExpr to be
nonassociative like this

RelationalExpr ::= AdditiveExpr
                   | AdditiveExpr '<' AdditiveExpr
                   | AdditiveExpr '>' AdditiveExpr
                   | AdditiveExpr '<=' AdditiveExpr
                   | AdditiveExpr '>=' AdditiveExpr

would avoid such "nonsense" 3 > 2 > 1 expressions.

(Dito for EqualityExpr and the example 0 = 0 = 0).

Thanks for giving me any insights :-)
Cheers,
Oliver

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