Re: [xsl] csv to xml converter bug

[mcburton <mcburton@xxxxxxxxx>]

Gak! I was having the same problem last week. I have a complete hack solution:

I included leading & trailing commas in the analyze-string regex, but
in the "foo,bar",,"foo,bar",x,,,"foo,bar" case I was also getting
problematic parsing. Since the regex was looking for an extra comma I
added it, I did a search for "," and replaced it with ",,"
I then spent the next 2 hours in shower cleaning off the dirty.

This worked for my particular dataset(and time crunch), but I'm not
sure if it is a generic solution. I continue the search for the Holy
Regex...

--
mcb

On 7/10/07, Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 7/10/07, Michael Kay <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > The construct
> >
> > (?=X)
> >
> > is allowed in some regex dialects, it means "match X with a zero-width
> > positive lookahead". But it's not allowed in the XPath regex dialect. This
> > is basically an assertion that X must match at the current position, without
> > causing X to be swallowed.
> >
> > This construct (a zero-width negative lookahead) isn't allowed either:
> >
> > (?!X)
> >
> > This is the inverse: it asserts that X does not match at the current
> > position, without swallowing X.
> >
> > I'm afraid I have no idea whether these constructs can be translated into
> > anything that the XPath regex dialect permits.
> >
> > Gunther Schadow can say "told you it would be needed":
> > http://www.stylusstudio.com/xsllist/200412/post00810.html
>
> Thanks for the explanation.  Haven't heard from Gunther for a while...
>
> The page gets quite a few hits so I think there is demand for a
> de-facto csv-to-xml solution in XSLT... Hopefully someone skilled in
> the dark arts of regex can fix the bug in the existing solution, or
> perhaps convert the unsupported regex into something that is.
>
> It certainly falls into the "rock hard" category of problems.
>
> --
> http://andrewjwelch.com