RE: "sorted" axis (was: Remove duplicates from a node-set accordi ng to content)

[Kay Michael <Michael.Kay@xxxxxxx>]

> This is really a question to those developing the XSL spec: is this a
> reasonable requirement? or am I on the wrong side of the 80/20 divide?
> is my vague hope for "sorted" axes doomed to disappointment?

It comes up so often that it MUST be a reasonable requirement. If you want
to do it in less than 35mins, try SAXON's group-by construct. 

(It's proprietary, though with extension elements becoming respectable it
will soon become more of a "standard extension" than a "proprietary
extension" - not that this makes any practical difference!)

The SAXON construct doesn't solve the problem by giving you sorted axes, it
does it by allowing you to write code that in effect allows you to add a
layer of hierarchy to a nodeset, so you can say

for each group of consecutive nodes with the same value of EXPR do
-- start of group processing
---- for each node withing the group do
------ process the node
---- end 
-- end of group processing
end

(It's puzzled me for a while that the design of XSL seems to have learnt
very little from 25 years of experience in designing report writers!)

Mike Kay


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