[acn-ericlaw]

What

Increment 178, the twin of the Java Accenture/mercury-composable#555: the maintainer's rulings on an independent review of f:rangeLookup, f:minRange and f:maxRange.

• Three kinds of bound. A canonical number compares exactly as a decimal, as before. Text in single or double quotes ('0020', "2026-11-15") compares as written and case-sensitively, and the quotes keep a zero-padded code or a case-sensitive band as text; a quoted bound may contain the separator. Unquoted text compares without case, as before, so every table of v4.12.23 behaves the same. A range, and every band of a table, is one kind; a mix is refused by name, with the hint that a leading zero makes text and that quoting both bounds compares them as text.
• Exact decimal bounds. f:minRange and f:maxRange answer a whole number as an integer and any other number as its exact decimal text, the DECIMAL convention where a float would round it; f:double converts it when a floating-point output value is wanted, and the guides say so.
• The lookup's checks. A band given as a list or a map is refused ("a band is one range"), as are a second .. outside quotes (a..b..c, 1...2), an unmatched quote and an empty quoted bound; a numeric bound is parsed once when the table is read.
• Declared, not gated. Text compares as written, so a value must be shaped like the bounds: dates and times in ISO-8601 order and zero-padded, the value carrying the same parts. The guides and the help page state it.

Pinned by the shared range-bounds-vectors.json (52 vectors) and range-lookup-vectors.json (48), both byte-identical with the Java repository and green on the first run, the extended fixture unit-test-range-bounds-1 (a fee band table with decimal bounds read back as text and converted with f:double; a quoted zero-padded product-code table) and the unit tests. Docs: the syntax guide, the skills reference, the AI agent guide, the mirrored help page and the redeployed bundle (index-DPKAiH17.js); CHANGELOG Unreleased item 1 rewritten to the final semantics; INCREMENTS 178.

Why

The review found that a band written as a list was read as text, that zero-padded codes made a table mixed with no way to say "text", and that a decimal bound lost precision as a float. Quoting makes the author's intent explicit, exact text keeps the engine's high-precision rule, and the new refusals turn two silent wrong answers into messages.

Verification

• cargo test -p mercury-event-script --lib range --test range_bounds_vectors --test range_lookup_vectors and cargo test -p mercury-knowledge-graph green; cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings and cargo fmt --all --check clean; scripts/check-doc-claims.py (50 claims) and scripts/check-llms-links.py (39 references) OK.
• The vector files, the fixture, the help page and the bundle are byte-identical with the Java twin.

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