To add to what David and Jarno have said:
self::*[@border]
translates into English as "the context node (itself), if it has a 'border'
attribute"
and would be almost the same as .[@border], except that the latter is not
allowed (as Jarno said). (I say almost the same since '.' is short not for
"self::*" but for "self::node()". node() selects nodes of any type, whereas
* selects only nodes of the primary type of the axis, usually elements.)
*[@border]
is short for "child::*[@border]"
But "self::" and "child::" have nothing to do with namespaces; rather, they
are XPath axis specifiers. Check out the XPath spec for full details. As
Jarno and David said, XPath is built into XSLT and no special namespace
apparatus is needed to use it.
Don't get thrown off by the appearance of the colon. 'self::*' and 'self:*'
are two very different things. 'self::*' is the element on the self axis,
whereas 'self:*' would be short for 'child::self:*', meaning all elements
in the 'self' namespace on the child axis.
But please don't ever use a namespace prefix like 'self' or 'child' or
'ancestor' unless you want your code to be unintelligible even to yourself.
This would truly be horrible:
self::ancestor:node[@child:border]
which would translate as "the context node itself, if and only if it is an
element named 'ancestor:node' and has an attribute named 'child:border'".
Yikes!
Confused yet? :-)
Cheers,
Wendell
======================================================================
Wendell Piez mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285
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