Re: [xsl] Usage of Asterisk in XPath expressions

["John Lumley john@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<xsl:attribute name=bselect:selectb
     select=blet $select:select :=
select:select($select,select:select[@select:select])
return $select:select(bselect:select')/select:select/@select:selectb/>

etc..... is I think, legitimate.....

Sent from my iPad

> On 22 Mar 2019, at 21:52, Wendell Piez wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Liam,
>
> Inevitably your observation about axis specifiers raises a larger
> question about fun namespace prefixes:
>
> 'element'
> 'attribute'
> 'node'
> 'select'
>
> ... are there others we should be especially careful about?
>
> Cheers, Wendell
>
> On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 4:12 PM Liam R. E. Quin liam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 2019-03-22 at 13:33 +0000, Martin Honnen martin.honnen@xxxxxx
>> wrote:
>> [...]
>>> However, the other main reason that doesn't raise an error is that
>>> ancestor-or-self::foo evaluates to the empty sequence in the context
>>> of that document and that way the multiplication also evaluates to
>>> the empty sequence.
>>
>> Yup, You're a star! :D
>>
>> As Mike Kay points out separately, itbs a problem when a language gets
>> so terse that almost any string of puctuation has a meaning.
>>
>> With regular expressions i tend to write [(] and [)] because i can
>> never remember in which sytaxes \(...\) is special, same with [{]
>> braces [}]. There can be an efficiency overhead for doing this, but
>> therebs a bigger efficiency overhead in time lost from a confused
>> developer :)
>>
>> Similarly, avoid using XPath axis names as namespace prefixes :-) :-)
>>
>> Liam
>>
>>
>> --
>> Liam Quin, https://www.delightfulcomputing.com/
>> Available for XML/Document/Information Architecture/XSLT/
>> XSL/XQuery/Web/Text Processing/A11Y training, work & consulting.
>> Web slave for vintage clipart http://www.fromoldbooks.org/
>
>
>
> --
> Wendell Piez | wendellpiez.com | wendell -at- nist -dot- gov
> pellucidliterature.org | github.com/wendellpiez |
> gitlab.coko.foundation/wendell  - pausepress.org