Re: [xsl] // expanding to descendant-or-self::node()

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 01:43 PM 9/17/2008, Andrew wrote:
> 2008/9/17 David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>:
> >
> >
> >> the distinction between //foo[1] and (//foo)[1]. That has got to be
> >> the biggest downside of the way "//"  is defined.
> >
> > and anyway any blemish in the definition of // is minor compared to !=
> > which would have been better not being defined, since 9 times out of 10
> > when it is used it does the wrong thing.
> >
>
> true, perhaps != should be for atomic comparison and much lesser used
> "ne" for set comparison, rather than the other way around...
>
> In Java using != to compare Strings gets underlined as a warning and
> you get a reminder to the use the method equals() instead, so maybe
> the same could be done here

I'm actually not in favor of changing any of it. I think Mike is 
right when he warns us that such "improvements" generally turn out to 
cost more, and for longer, than they're worth.

Can you imagine us having to sort out the "oh, that processor uses 
the old XPath 1.0 semantics" issues that would come up here? Write 
the caveats into every answer that we gave about anything? Posting 
lists, with painful pedantic explanations, of things that are the 
same and things that aren't the same?

It falls into the category of Be Careful What You Wish For. Yes, we 
can point out flaws. But let's do it in an effort to mitigate their 
negative effects, rather than in the hope of scrubbing them away -- 
and then dealing with the unpredictable consequences of whatever was 
done in the attempt to do that.

Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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