RE: Can a match attribute use a non-pattern expression?

[Kay Michael <Michael.Kay@xxxxxxx>]

Elliotte Rusty Harold asked:
>  Why is match restricted to patterns while select is not? 

I think the reasoning is that patterns should not be context-dependent. It
should be possible to determine whether a node matches a pattern without
actually executing the algorithm:

for all possible contexts
  NodeSet n = evaluate(NodeSetExpression, Context);
  if (n contains target) return true;
end for;
return false;

Actually I think there are some patterns for which it is quite hard to avoid
executing this algorithm, especially those that use "last()". But at least
the new draft only requires us to consider ancestors of the target node as
the possible contexts.

Mike Kay


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