Re: [xsl] Best Practice: use @as wherever possible

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

Think of the division between @as and xsl:assert in the following way:
If what you want to check is the type of a single variable as optional/one or
more/any of a given type attach @as to the defining statement (xsl:variable,
xsl:param, xsl:sequence). As Michael says, the compiler can do much more with
that, either in static or dynamic phases.
If you need to check something much more complex (e..g. count(items) > 6,
$node/parent::container[count(*) gt 5]), add an xsl:assert binstructionb.
John Lumley

> On 6 May 2022, at 20:02, Roger L Costello costello@xxxxxxxxx
<xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> o;?Michael Kay wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> If you can express the condition with an @as attribute,
> use that in preference to an xsl:assert, because it's much
> more amenable to static analysis - certainly with Saxon,
> xsl:assert will only ever give you a run-time error. The
> diagnostics for type errors will also tend to be better.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Fantastic!
>
> Thank you Michael.
>
> /Roger