.. _section-Dot Expressions:

Dot Expressions
---------------

Flora supports *dot expressions* typical of object-oriented languages, of the form term.property.property..., where the entire dot expression denotes the value of the last property in the chain. For example,

.. code-block:: flora

    ?person1.age > ?person2.age

is equivalent to

.. code-block:: flora

    ?person1 [age -> ?age1],
    ?person2 [age -> ?age2],
    ?age1 > ?age2

Dot expressions thus remove clutter and intermediate variables, and can make rules more concise.