The syntax we agreed on is: hierarchical string = component, { "/", component }; component = component character, { component character }; component character = ? JSON string character ? - "/"; If we changed it to hierarchical string = component, { "/", component }; component = { component character }; component character = ? JSON string character ? - "/"; … then a component could be empty: "foo // bar" "foo/bar / " " / foo/bar" … and in fact the whole string could be empty: "" Do we want to allow this? For now I’m going to merge what we agreed on. Larry