Re: [xsl] Integrated sort using different elements

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

At 2009-02-19 10:13 -0600, Quinn Dombrowski wrote:
> I'm using 2.0 (sorry, I should've mentioned that), so I'll try 
> Michael's solution and let you know how it goes...

Before you do so, Quinn .....

At 2009-02-19 10:19 -0500, I wrote:
> In XSLT 2.0, choose the first item in a sequence of many items, 
> priority indicated by the order of your sequence:
>
> <xsl:sort select="
>  ( monogr/author, analytic/author, monogr/editor, monogr/title )[1]"/>

At 2009-02-19 15:47 +0000, Michael Kay wrote:
> Would it work to sort on the concatenation? -
>
> <xsl:sort select="concat(monogr/author, analytic/author, monogr/editor,
> monogr/title"/>

I think the sequence solution is safer than the concatenation 
solution because if more than one field is present, then the initial 
characters of a following field, tacked on to the final characters of 
a preceding field, will but the record out of order.

Consider the following:

<biblStruct id="b1">
  <monogr>
    <author>abc</author>
    ...
  <analytic>
    <author>xyz</author>
  ...
<biblStruct id="b2">
  <monogr>
    <author>abcdef</author>

Using the sequence approach would put "b1" before "b2" in the result 
because "abc" is before "abcdef", while using the concatenation 
approach would put "b2" before "b1" in the result because "abcdef" is 
before "abcxyz".

I hope this illustrates an important issue that was neglected in your decision.

. . . . . . . . . . Ken

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