Re: [xsl] Find/replace algorithm

["Joel Kalvesmaki director@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jim,

If you can express the substitutions as proper XSLT regular expressions 
(i.e., no \b), then you could add as one more possibility the use of 
tan:batch-replace(), which allows you to stay within XSLT.

One passes as parameters a sequence of elements with attributes 
corresponding to fn:match() parameters. They are processed in sequence 
order. An extra @message attribute can provide simple feedback as 
changes are made. Your example:

   <xsl:variable name="my-batch-replaces" as="element()*">
      <replace pattern="(\W)Wid(\W)" replacement="$1Widget$2"/>
      <replace pattern="(\W)Assbly(\W)" replacement="$1Assembly$2"/>
      <replace pattern="(\W)Eng(\W)" replacement="$1Engine$2"/>
   </xsl:variable>

   <xsl:template match="text()" mode="batch-replace">
      <xsl:value-of select="tan:batch-replace(., $my-batch-replaces)"/>
   </xsl:template>

Over the last several years the function has personally proved in 
day-to-day use on XML files of punishing complexity to be quite 
efficient, even when I ask for numerous replacements with some crazy 
regular expressions.

The code (don't forget the submodules):
https://github.com/textalign/TAN-2020/blob/b71f9f93030232911a83508e88f0d184d88fbe00/functions/incl/TAN-core-string-functions.xsl

One more arrow in your quiver....

jk
--
Joel Kalvesmaki
Director, Text Alignment Network
http://textalign.net

> I use this program along with XSLT.  I choose the best from each
> world.  Right now I am converting a dictionary in Word format to be
> input into FLEx (our linguistic tool) for handling dictionaries. I
> export Word to XHTML and then process with the context in mind with
> XSLT.  After I have done as much as I can here I switch to CC. There
> are lots of items that are better handled with the changes tables.
>
> Jim Albright
> Wycliffe Bible Translators
> 704-562-1529
>
> On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 1:35 PM Liam R. E. Quin liam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 2021-03-25 at 16:29 +0000, rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > > Thank you Michael. I like the idea of keeping the processing cost
> > > constant
> > > but I was going to use regular expressions in my map, so I may
> > still
> > > have to
> > > loop through the lookup structure.
> >
> > An alternative to consider is to put your input document into a map
> > and
> > check each map key against all the tokens.