Re: [xsl] Can sets have order?

[David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>]

> The pure mathematician (David) wins that point.

OK if you turn up in Oxford, I'll buy you a beer:-)



> The reason I objected to David's going on about sets not having order is that 
> he seemed to be claiming that node sets do not have order.

I didn't just seem to be, I was!


I find it much easier to understand XSL semantics for myself, and to
explain them to others, if I take this point of view.
I think the original confusion in the "nearest ancester thread" came
about precisely because people were not thinking in this way.

The XSL spec is always very careful to distinguish  between "node set"
and the "current node list" the latter, being a list and not a set,
has an order, and that's what position() refers to. In some places the
current node list emerges by magic out of a given node set, but it is
still useful to keep the things clearly separated in your (or at least,
my) mind.

David

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