Re: [xsl] ancestor question

Subject: Re: [xsl] ancestor question
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2001 00:59:07 -0400
At 04:03 PM 10/1/01, Francis wrote:
Wendell Piez wrote:
>
> The trick is, that the value of a node-set is the string value of the
> *first* node in the node-set (in document order).
>
I'm feeling picky picky picky today... just in case anyone reads the
above sentence out of its original context (now, how could that happen?)

Oh, maybe if someone quoted you ... :->


may I point out that while it is true for xsl:value-of, it is not always
true - exceptions (ranging from the obvious to the less obvious) include
xsl:apply-templates, xsl:variable and document()

Good point. I should have been clearer. I meant "value" in the sense of "string-value", as used in the XPath spec. (http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#dt-string-value, http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#function-string etc.)


Those other things return node-sets (the document() function), assign values (of any datatype) to variables, copy to the result tree, create fragments etc. and in many cases there are "values" floating around.

I guess it's so handy always to be able to know what the string-value is, that I just think of "values" meaning ways of getting access to the data in the source tree ... comes out as strings. Misleading, I guess.

(On the other hand, you could say the value of something is what you get when you ask for ...say... value-of...)

I'll try to say "string-value" from now on.

Cheers,
Wendell


====================================================================== Wendell Piez mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com 17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635 Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631 Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML ======================================================================


XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list



Current Thread