RE: [xsl] Expanding Tabs

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

At 04:34 PM 3/29/2010, Charles wrote:
> The XSLT function you are looking for is "translate()". The concept 
> is more general than what you are used to thinking about, so it's 
> not surprising that by looking for a narrower concept (i.e., 
> "expand"), that you haven't been able to find it.

Well yes ... "expand" is either narrower or broader, depending on 
what you mean by "expand". It's not a term likely to get you much 
precision in a search.

Another aspect of this problem that explains why this might be hard 
to find is that XSLT wasn't actually designed with string processing 
in mind. There's the translate() function, which can be used to 
convert single tabs into single spaces, and there are various methods 
designed to work in XSLT 1.0 (most of them necessarily heavy-duty for 
such a "simple" requirement), and there are straightforward 
regular-expression capabilities in XPath/XSLT 2.0. So it's not as if 
this can't or hasn't been done.

It's more that the precise approach isn't as obvious as one might 
think. Convert tab characters into "the appropriate number of blanks" 
-- what's the appropriate number? Is it fixed by the stylesheet? Must 
it be parameterized? Are tabs everywhere to be converted, or only at 
the start of lines? Can this use XSLT 2.0 or must it be XSLT 1.0? Etc. etc.

How about replace(.,'	','    ') ?

Cheers,
Wendell



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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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