XSLT wish list

["Robert C. Lyons" <boblyons@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm writing an XSLT stylesheet that must validate some of the
fields in the source document while transforming the
source document into a new XML document. When my XSLT stylesheet 
finds a validation error, I would like it to do the following:

- Write an error message to standard error (rather than to the result tree).
  The error message should include the line number within the source
  document of the invalid data.

- Abort the processing of the stylesheet and specify the exit code
  that the XSLT processor will return.

I'm hoping that a future version of XSLT will let me use
the xsl:message instruction to write an error message
to standard error.

It would also be nice if XSLT provided a function that returned
the line number for a node in the source document.

Lastly, I'd like to see an "xsl:exit" instruction added to XSLT.
For example:

    <xsl:if test="not(element='valid_value')">
        <xsl:message>Error: element contains invalid value</xsl:message>
        <!-- Abort stylesheet and cause the XSLT processor to exit with 
             an exit code of 2. -->
        <xsl:exit code="2"/>
    </xsl:if>

With the current version of XSLT, the stylesheet can abort
processing by invoking an illegal instruction (e.g., xsl:abort-stylesheet). 
For example:

    <xsl:if test="not(element='valid_value')">
        <xsl:message>Error: element contains invalid value</xsl:message>
        <!-- Abort stylesheet by invoking an illegal instruction. -->
        <xsl:abort-stylesheet/>
    </xsl:if>

However, this is a little kludgey and it doesn't allow you specify an exit code.
Also, there may be cases where you want the stylesheet to force an early,
successful exit. 

Bob

------
Bob Lyons
EC Consultant
Unidex Inc.
1-732-975-9877
boblyons@xxxxxxxxxx
http://www.unidex.com/

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