Name

uname — intern a string value as a unique-name (uname) atom

Synopsis

any uname( in value any);
 

Description

uname converts value (a narrow or wide string, or another uname) into a Virtuoso unique-name atom. Unames are server-wide interned strings: equal unames share the same in-memory pointer, so comparing them is constant-time and identical values use only one allocation regardless of how many places refer to them. RDF triples store IRIs as unames, and the XML and SPARQL machinery use them heavily for element/attribute names and IRI prefixes.

Pass an existing uname through to obtain it unchanged; pass a narrow or wide string to intern its value. The result is of type uname and can be tested with isuname. Returns SQL NULL when the input is NULL.

See Also

isuname, isstring


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