Re: [xsl] [XSLT 1.0] Q: recursively eliminate empty nodes

[Michael Kay <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I just noticed (from here: 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/#dt-default-priority) that in XSLT 2.0, 
> "/" has priority -0.5, whereas it has +0.5 in XSLT 1.0. I was 
> surprised to see this. Maybe it has no practical impact (other than 
> invalidating my easy-to-remember rule). Or am I missing something?
I'm trying to recall the reasoning. It was something like this: In XSLT 
1.0, "/" (or a union with "/" as one of its branches) was the only 
pattern that could ever match a document (aka root) node. So its 
priority didn't really matter much, except perhaps in the artificial 
case where you have two templates saying match="/", one with an explicit 
priority and one without. In 2.0 it made sense to align its priority 
with other patterns where the node-kind and nothing else was known: it 
means the same as match="document-node()" which should logically have 
the same priority as "element()" or "attribute()" or "text()". Retaining 
the 1.0 priority would have meant match="/" having a higher priority 
than match="document-node(element(invoice))", which would be 
counter-intuitive.

Michael Kay
Saxonica