Re: Side-effects, state, internal references

[Paul Prescod <papresco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Kent Fitch wrote:
> 
> With XSL we *can* go up the XML tree to get the employee element and get
> the emp#, but having to do this on every sub-element is expensive,
> whereas
> setting a "current global employee #" and using it when outputting the
> child records is simple and fast.

Yes, but let me make a few notes:

 * XSL is not designed to be a general purpose text processing or report
writing language. *MSXSL* (the tool) can do that, and it is pretty good at
it. You should use it without guilt. Why do you care if your report
writing software runs on one processor or 100?

 * In XSL's real problem domain (where interoperability is important),
this problem is rare.

 * In a good implementation, going up to a parent node and asking its
child-number does not strike me as all that very expensive. Jade
consistently surprises me with its performance on queries that I expect to
be slow.

 Paul Prescod  - http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

"Perpetually obsolescing and thus losing all data and programs every 10
years (the current pattern) is no way to run an information economy or
a civilization." - Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog
http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/10124.html



 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list