Re: [xsl] "if-condition-return something" idiom : is it possible in XSLT ?

["Liam R E Quin liam@xxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2014-06-16 at 13:00 +0000, Kerry, Richard richard.kerry@xxxxxxxx
wrote:
> I tend to view (*) xsl:choose as similar to C's "switch", which needs
> to do a single calculation to work out which branch to run.
> (*)  I may well be wrong in this.....

xsl:choose is like a sequence of C if statements in practice, and is
what yu want for your C++-like example.

But I think it better to think of xsl:choose in the mathematical sense,
e.g.

 A := f(x)
       0 when x <= 1
      17 when x <= 7
       A(x - 1) . A(x - 2) when x^2 + 1 is prime
      31x / 7 otherwise

That is, I prefer to think of XSLT as a functional language in which one
is describing the end result rather than as a procedural language with
loops and returns.

There's no concept of an "early return" from a mathematical function,
nor from an XSLT one.

Liam


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