@litera That sounds plausible, but as noted in my previous comment it was added in that form with this [commit](https://github.com/angular/angular.js/commit/04cebcc133c8b433a3ac5f72ed19f3631778142b#diff-34e732507a1b6941aaf4ae5084a7c6ca). Either way the code consuming the output appears to only be concerned with the question mark or the asterisk.