Re: [xsl] xsl:if test = empty string, returns true

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2012-05-13 23:17 +0200, Jorge wrote:
> > And, you are looking for the adjacent node (which in your example 
> is a text node), rather than the adjacent element (unless you are 
> invoking saxon with the option to strip white-space text nodes from 
> your input, in which case that is not true).
>
> No I wasn't invoking saxon with such option, but did try nevertheless to use:
>
>         <xsl:strip-space elements="plist dict"/>
>
> and
>
>         <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
>
> Still, even with or without those, if I assigned a value to the 
> string, the function did capture it and showed it in the output of 
> my original stylesheet in either case. Why does following::node()[1] 
> return the string's value in both cases then?

I see now that saxon was doing it by default.  When I add -strip:none 
to the invocation then your code fails.

> > BTW, I very rarely ever have to address text() nodes
>
> Well, I did that to try to force the function to return a string 
> instead of a tree :-/

But the normalize-space() returns a string, so how you address the 
content is irrelevant.  It isn't that you were addressing a text node 
that a text node was returned, it was that your function was 
returning a tree with a text node created from the string output from 
normalize-space().  Your code was expecting the string to be 
returned.  It is very subtle and it comes up in class.

> As you can see there are still concepts of XSL that I am not quite 
> grasping yet.

If you have the time I have posted 5 free hours of my XSLT training video here:

  http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/links/udemy.htm

... where you do not need to create a username in order to view free 
content ... just close the sign-up dialogue box.  The free stuff is 
mostly introductory, so this particular issue is not covered, but you 
might find other tips.

> More than appreciated. I simply wanted to discourage answers that 
> focused on issues that did not address my main question. Please 
> excuse me for the prejudice.

No apology necessary ... I'm just trying to keep things found in the 
archive from pointing readers the "wrong" way.

Good luck in your project!

. . . . . . . . . . Ken

--
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