RE: [xsl] add variables

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Zongqing:

At 05:49 PM 7/17/01, you wrote:
> Thanks. Now another question:
>
> How to do the counter increment?
>         <xsl:variable name="counter">1</xsl:variable>
>         $counter=$counter + 1

Oops. A FAQ. You can't: that's not the way XSLT is designed to work.

If you could describe why (you think) you need to increment the counter, 
someone can undoubtedly suggest how else to approach your problem. In 
general, XSLT assumes processing can and should be driven by the content of 
the source tree (element and attribute types, their order and position, 
etc. etc.), not by some processing logic in the stylesheet. That is, 
whatever it is that you need to track by incrementing a counter, you 
probably don't need to track it, since the information's already available 
to you. (Only in extreme cases does one use recursion and have to track 
things otherwise.)

Check out the XSL FAQ, there's some commentary in there on this issue (deep 
in the section on variables).

Cheers,
Wendell



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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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