Re: [xsl] How to get page range within a group

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:10 AM 9/12/2008, David wrote:

> > (//para)[1]
> >
> > and
> >
> > /descendant::para[1]
> >
> > are equivalent?
>
> yes,
>
> although of course the real expansion is
>
> (/descendant-or-self::node()/child::para)[1]
>
> but it comes to the same thing in this case.

Yes. Their semantics are different, but they return the same node, 
which I guess makes them equivalent.

The difference between //para[1] and (//para)[1] is that in the 
former case, the predicate operates only on the final step of a path 
with two steps, whereas in the latter, the predicate operates on the 
node set returned by the expression as a whole. This is much easier 
to see in the long form:

//para[1]    is  /descendant-or-self::node()/child::para[1]

(//para)[1]  is  (/descendant-or-self::node()/child::para)[1]

Cheers,
Wendell



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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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