Subject: Re: [xsl] Evaluating XPath expressions found in the source document From: "Michael Beddow" <mbnospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 11:30:38 +0100 |
On Thursday, August 16, 2001 10:56 AM Jeni Tennison wrote: > No, it is an XPath expression, consisting of a single function call. I > think that the terminology confusion comes because XPath sounds as > though it's just about paths, but actually location paths are just one > type of expression (albeit the most common). Expressions cover > anything that you can put in the select attribute of xsl:value-of, so > include arithmetic and function calls. Hi Jeni! So it *was* ignorance, as I suspected. But now it's replaced by deep confusion and anxiety about the notion of a function that seems to exist divorced from any mechanism for implementing it (talking "functions" in the loose computer language sense, not the mathematical one). I understand now that those functions are part of the XPath spec, not the XSLT spec, but surely they still have to be implemented by the XSLT processor, and I took the query to be about implementation, not specification. I mean, the subset of XPath expressions I had mistakenly taken to be the entire set are simply abstract notations of how to identify a node from a known starting point. All they need in the real world is a possibility of there being a instance of a tree that fits them. But concat(), though it too is an abstraction, is one whose realisation requires a machine somewhere that knows how to do things to the data. And where is that machine, if not in the XSLT processor? But if that is in indeed where it is, how is format-number() different from concat() in terms of what can actually be done to what and where? What struck me about the original query, as I (mis)understood it, was that it seemed to be aiming for a LISP-like interchangeability of programming instructions and data, which I didn't think XSLT was up to. Sorry if my ramblings are off-topic. Perhaps they should be off-list, too. But maybe other people are as muddled about this as I obviously am and need the same sort of help. Michael --------------------------------------------------------- Michael Beddow http://www.mbeddow.net/ XML and the Humanities page: http://xml.lexilog.org.uk/ --------------------------------------------------------- XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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