Re: [xsl] text() function

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

At 2005-04-25 11:46 -0700, Sameer N wrote:
> I am trying to look if the word blah exists in the entire document.

contains( /, "blah" )


> Is there any difference between
> //*[conatins(text(), "blah")]
> and
> //*[conatins( . , "blah")]

Absolutely.  Each one has a predicate that addresses a single node, the 
first one addresses the value of the first text child node of the current 
node, while the second one addresses the value of current node.

> Is the using of string() function as suggested in the blog right way to do 
> what I want... because I read in one book that string() only matches the 
> first element found and does not go thru the entire document trying to 
> match all elements found.

XPath states that the value of an element is the concatenation of all 
descendent text nodes, hence the difference in what you have 
above:  checking that "." contains "blah" checks the concatenation of all 
text nodes of the current node.

In my suggestion above you would search the value of the root node, which 
is the value of the document element, which is the value of the 
concatenation of all text nodes in the entire document.

I hope this helps.

. . . . . Ken

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