Re: [xsl] monotonous nbsp coding

[Mike Brown <mike@xxxxxxxx>]

Greg Faron wrote:
> At 04:36 PM 11/13/2002, you wrote:
> >Greg Faron <gfaron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >    <xsl:if test="string-length() = 0">
> >                                 ^^ Is this a typo?
> 
>    No.  When called without an argument, the context node is converted to a 
> string and used as the argument.  There are many alternative ways to test 
> whether the string value of the context node is the empty string, I simply 
> carried the one that the OP used so as not to confuse the reference.  Other 
> possibilities include
> string(.) = ''
> normalize-space() = ''
> normalize-space(.) = ''

The equality tests aren't even needed in those, since the fact that it's in a
test attribute means that the whole thing is treated as if it is wrapped in
boolean(). The boolean equivalent of an empty string or the number zero is
false.

> not(string(.))

Yeah, just like that.

> normalize-space(string-length(.)) = 0

That's a lot of extra work. The argument to normalize-space() ends up being a
number, which has to be coerced to a string, and then your equality test
converts it back into a number in order to compare it with zero.  
normalize-space() with no arguments and no comparisons is all you need.

   - Mike
____________________________________________________________________________
  mike j. brown                   |  xml/xslt: http://skew.org/xml/
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