Re: [xsl] data translation => descendants appear side by sid

Joerg,

I'm afraid I didn't track the start of this thread, but there is a common "gotcha" here, and I think you're right, you may be observing a buglet in Xalan.

(.//description)[$pos] is an expansion of

(./descendant-or-self::node()/child::description)[position()=$pos]
translates into English as

From the context node, collect all descendant description elements (i.e. all description elements that are children of the context node or its descendants), and of that set take the one in $pos position in document order.

.//description[$pos] expands

./descendant-or-self::node()/child::description[position()=$pos]
translates as

From the context node, collect all description elements that are children of the context node or its descendants, and take those that are in $pos position *as children of their parents* (i.e. among their siblings).

Note that the presence of the parentheses grouping operator in the first case is critical, since it collects all those children and filters them as a group; whereas in the second case, the predicate operates only on the last step, 'child::description[position()=$pos]'.

Does that help clarify or confirm? It was tough enough for me to internalize this distinction when I was learning XPath that it stuck. I hope.

Cheers,
Wendell

At 09:25 AM 5/4/2002, you wrote:

I searched for a different and more general approach (not limited to 2 base elements). The stylesheet is quite short:

<xsl:template match="root"> <html> <head><title>Descriptions</title></head> <body> <table border="1"> <xsl:apply-templates select="base[not(count(following-sibling::base//description) > count(.//description))]//description"/> </table> </body> </html> </xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="description">
  <xsl:variable name="pos" select="position()"/>
  <tr>
    <xsl:for-each select="/root/base">
      <td>
        <xsl:value-of select="(.//description)[$pos]"/>
      </td>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </tr>
</xsl:template>
But I found a bug in Xalan: When using <xsl:value-of select=".//description[$pos]"/>, I already get the wanted result.

But when I read in the spec

"For example appendix//ulist/item[position()=1] matches a node if and only if all of the following are true: * ... * evaluating the PredicateExpr position()=1 with the node as context node and the *siblings* of the node that are item elements as the context node list yields true * ..."

I suspect this behaviour is wrong, isn't it?

Regards,

Joerg
should be transformed into:
<table>
    <tr>
        <td>some_desc1</td>
        <td>some_desc1</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>some_desc2</td>
        <td>some_add_desc2</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>some_add_desc3</td>
        <td>some_desc3</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>some_add_desc4</td>
        <td>some_desc4</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td></td>
        <td>some_add_desc5</td>
    </tr>
</table>
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

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