Re: [xsl] Processing a Sequence of String Tokens in XSLT 2

Subject: Re: [xsl] Processing a Sequence of String Tokens in XSLT 2
From: "Andrew Welch" <andrew.j.welch@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 20:52:10 +0100
On 6/6/07, Eliot Kimber <ekimber@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I suspect this is an FAQ, and if so, feel free to point me to existing
discussion, but I'm curious as to what the most efficient/elegant way to
process a sequence of string tokens is.

In my specific case, I need to init-cap all the words in a string (I
don't need any sophistication like special case for conjunctions or
anything).

Here's the XSLT 2 function I came up with:

   <xsl:function
     name="func:normalizeTitleContent">
     <!-- Normalizes the case of titles based on the FASB-defined rules
for title case -->
     <xsl:param
     name="titleElem"/>
     <xsl:variable name="titleTokens"
select="tokenize(string($titleElem), ' ')"/>
     <xsl:variable name="resultString">
       <xsl:for-each select="$titleTokens">
         <xsl:sequence select="concat(upper-case(substring(., 1,1)),
substring(., 2))"/>
       </xsl:for-each>
     </xsl:variable>
     <xsl:sequence select="$resultString"/>
   </xsl:function>

Which seems reasonably compact and understandable but I suspect that I'm
not doing things as cleverly or as "correctly" as I could.

Is there a better way to have written this function?

I would add the "as" for the the param, return value and the variables... and you may need a <xsl:value-of/> in there to get a single string from a sequence of strings as the return value. I think also you may be relying on the default separator used between items in the sequence to the single space back that gets lost during the tokenization.

With all that in mind, here's a version with the modifications I've mentioned:

<xsl:function  name="func:normalizeTitleContent" as="xs:string">
<xsl:param name="titleStr" as="xs:string"/>
 <xsl:value-of separator=" ">
  <xsl:for-each select="tokenize($titleStr, ' ')">
   <xsl:sequence select="concat(upper-case(substring(., 1,1)),
substring(., 2))"/>
  </xsl:for-each>
 </xsl:value-of>
</xsl:function>

which is the same as:

<xsl:function  name="func:normalizeTitleContent" as="xs:string">
<xsl:param name="titleStr" as="xs:string"/>
<xsl:sequence select="string-join(for $word in tokenize($titleStr, ' ') return
concat(upper-case(substring($word, 1,1)), substring($word, 2)), ' ')"/>
</xsl:function>

cheers
andrew

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