Re: [xsl] Equals (=)

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Matt--

At 03:43 PM 9/25/01, you wrote:
> Hello all,
>      I am sure this question is implementation-specific, and probably just
> for my own knowledge, but perhaps a generalized response is possible.
>
>      How does XSL compare two elements to see if they are equal?
> i.e. <xsl:if test = "$element1=$element2>
>
> In my current situation(comparing using Saxon), doing this seems to be
> tremendously faster than comparing all of the children of element1 and
> element2.  My assumption is that the parser hashes up each element and
> compares them.  Is this correct?

Not exactly. It's only comparing string values of the nodes. And no, it's 
not implementation-specific. (How it's done internally may be, but the 
rules of what constitutes "equal" are not.)

The XPath spec [3.4] is really the place to go for this: it's a bit 
complex, but clearly enough explained. You need to know that the value of 
an element node is the concatenation of the values of its text node 
descendants.

Cheers,
Wendell

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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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