Appendix — Addressing

Status: informative summary for consolidated v1

Canonical topic owner: ../addressing-references-v1.md

If this appendix conflicts with the canonical addressing reference, the canonical addressing reference wins.

1. Canonical Path Rendering

Member segments:

• bare: $.a.b
• quoted: $.["a.b"]

Address-expression attribute selectors:

• bare: $.a@meta
• quoted: $.a@["profile.name"]

Mixed address-expression examples:

• $.["key"]@["a"].["b"]
• $.["array key"][2]

Disambiguation examples:

• a = { b = 1 } -> $.a and ~a resolve the object; $.a.b and ~a.b resolve 1.
• "a.b" = 2 -> $.["a.b"] and ~["a.b"] resolve 2 (single quoted member key, not traversal).

2. Attribute Segment Rule

• Bare attribute segment syntax is @key.
• Quoted-key attribute segment syntax is @["key with spaces"].
• Attribute selectors participate in addressing expressions, not canonical path identity.

3. Decoding and Equivalence

• Quoted keys are decoded before identity/comparison.
• Duplicate-key and duplicate-path checks operate on decoded key values.
• Canonical path output uses double-quoted bracket form for non-bare keys.
• Equivalent escaped spellings resolve to the same decoded key identity.

4. Normalized Wildcard Path (Derived)

Implementations may expose a derived normalized path string for wildcard dispatch ergonomics:

• canonical (authoritative): $.contacts[3].email
• normalized (derived): contacts[*].email

Normalization rules:

1. Drop root marker.
2. Keep member names unchanged.
3. Replace numeric index segments with [*].
4. Preserve member traversal dots.

Normalized path is non-authoritative convenience metadata only.

5. Namespace Neutrality

• No dedicated namespace syntax exists in AEON core.
• # has no intrinsic namespace semantics in core addressing.
• @ns is not reserved.
• Recommended ecosystem convention: @{ns="namespace.v1"} metadata.

6. Reference/Visibility Alignment

• Data and attribute namespaces remain distinct.
• Explicit attribute references are required for attribute namespace traversal.
• No-forward/self constraints apply per namespace.