Re: [xsl] Re: Comparing two xml documents

[Mike Brown <mike@xxxxxxxx>]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Ragulf Pickaxe wrote:
> 
> > What is the differenct between:
> > <xsl:template match="*">
> > 
> > and
> > 
> > <xsl:template match="node()">
> 
> i went through this grief recently.  as i read it, "*" will
> match any element, while node() will match any of
> 
> 1) elements
> 2) comments
> 3) processing instructions
> 4) text nodes
> 
> is this about right?

Yes.

To be pedantic, '*' matches any node that is of the 'principal node type' for
the given axis. The default axis is 'child', so match="*" really means
match="child::*". The principal node type for the child axis is element, so
yes, "*" matches any element node.

The attribute and namespace axes have a different principal node type, so for
example "attribute::*" or its shorthand "@*" both match any attribute node.

node() matches any node at all, but match="node()" means
match="child::node()", so it only matches nodes that can be children, which is
all node types other than attribute, namespace, and root. So yeah, you got it.

Mike

-- 
  Mike J. Brown   |  http://skew.org/~mike/resume/
  Denver, CO, USA |  http://skew.org/xml/

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