org.semanticweb.elk.owl.interfaces
Interface ElkLiteral

All Superinterfaces:

ElkAnnotationValue, ElkObject

public interface ElkLiteral
extends ElkObject, ElkAnnotationValue

Corresponds to a Literal in the OWL 2 specification. The OWL specification distinguishes three specific kinds of literals: typed literals, plain literals without language tag, and plain literals with language tag. However, plain literals are identified with typed literals of type "rdf:PlainLiteral" where the language tag is represented as part of the lexical form. For example, "Some text"@de is represented as "Some text@de"^^rdf:PlainLiteral and "Another text" is represented as "Another text@"^^rdf:PlainLiteral. These forms are considered structurally identical. Therefore, all literals can be considered as consisting of a lexical form and a datatype. Also note that the semantic interpretation of literals is not part of the structural model of OWL. For example, the literals "1"^^xsd:integer, "+1"^^xsd:integer, and "1"^^xsd:shortint are all different.

Author:

Markus Kroetzsch

Method Summary

<O> O	accept(ElkLiteralVisitor<O> visitor) Accept an ElkLiteralVisitor.
ElkDatatype	getDatatype() Get the datatype of this literal.
String	getLexicalForm() Get the lexical form of this literal.

Methods inherited from interface org.semanticweb.elk.owl.interfaces.ElkObject

accept

Method Detail

getLexicalForm

String getLexicalForm()

Get the lexical form of this literal.

Returns:

The lexical form of this literal.

getDatatype

ElkDatatype getDatatype()

Get the datatype of this literal. Note that "untyped" literals use the datatype rdf:PlainLiteral in OWL.

Returns:

The datatype of this literal.

accept

<O> O accept(ElkLiteralVisitor<O> visitor)

Accept an ElkLiteralVisitor.

Parameters:

visitor - the visitor that can work with this axiom type

Returns:

the output of the visitor