Appendix — Addressing

Canonical topic owner: AEON v1 Addressing, SANSA Literals, and References Reference.

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 Selector Path (Derived)

Implementations may expose a derived normalized selector string for dispatch ergonomics:

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

• normalized (derived): $.contacts.*.email

Normalization rules:

1. Preserve root marker.

2. Keep member names unchanged.

3. Replace numeric index segments with .*.

4. Preserve member traversal dots.

Normalized selector 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.