Re: [xsl] What does the phrase "duplicates removed" mean precisely?

[Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 2/1/06, Mark Wilson <drmark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> In reading Michael Kay's XPath 2.0, I frequently encountered the phrase,
> "...returned with no duplicates...". I checked the FAQ mantained by Dave
> Pawson under both XSLT Terminology -- where "duplicates" is used to define
> the term "Node Set" -- and under XSL Frequently Asked Questions where
> "duplicates" has its own heading. From that reading, I am all but convinced
> that "duplicates" refers to the (I cannot recall the correct XML term)
> content text demarked by a starting and ending XML element pair, as in
>
>    <SomeTag>This is the text</SomeTag>

Not only. This may be attributes with the same (repeating) value.
>
> Is this correct, or is my understanding imperfect? Are there any other kind
> of "duplicates" removed?

I find the notion of "duplicates" much broader -- generally they are a
set of items having the same value (generally expressed as an XPath
expression). In XPath 2.0 these items may even be scalars (not nodes).

In any such case as defined above, the task of "removing duplicates"
(or grouping)  is meaningful.


--
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev
---------------------------------------
To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the
biggest mistake of all.


> Thanks,
> Mark