Re: [xsl] counting characters in an XML document

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tom:

Mike B. has already pointed out that this is more problematic than it may 
seem on the surface.

If you want to count the number of characters *just in text nodes*, you can 
use the XPath expression string-length(/) to get a count. (The root node, 
taken as a string, is the concatenation of all the text nodes in the 
document.) I am leaving aside complexities of counting Unicode combining 
characters together or separately, etc.: most (all) processors will just 
give a straight character count, I think.

Also, whitespace characters such as line feeds, extra space to indent 
elements, etc. will be counted unless you strip them with <xsl:strip-space 
elements="..."/>.

Counting the length of the text might be a useful alternative for your 
purposes to counting elements.

Cheers,
Wendell

At 03:10 PM 10/24/01, you wrote:
> Hi,
> Does anyone know how I can use XSL to count the number of characters in an
> XML document. I want to process the XML so that, if there are less than a
> certain amount of characters, a certain message gets printed. Another option
> could be counting number of tags (elements)
>
> any ideas out there?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tom
>
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list


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