deterministic content model?

[Gary Stephenson <garys@ihug.com.au>]

Hi all,

I am currently trying to get my XML processor to correctly detect
non-deterministic content models - which means I have first to understand them
myself ! <g>

Is the following content model determinisic?

(a, (b|c)+, (a|b)?, (a|c)* )?

The recent posts concerning the Conformance Test suite results imply that it
_is_ deterministic (see test ibm47v01), but in my understanding, when matching
the following sequence

a,b,a

the second 'a' could be matched by either the ' (a|b)? ' or the ' (a|c)* '
terms.  Does this not mean that the model is non-deterministic?

<and-Heisenberg-begat-Goedel>'ly y'rs

gary